


Much Ado About Goddess Towers

by RoseisaRoseisaRose



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Blue Lions Route, Borrowing Clothes, Felix Being an Idiot, Fluff, Multi, Pre-Time Skip, Underage Drinking, also evidently bishop annette, annette is very ambitious okay, dancer annette, dreams as a narrative device, exciting action including but not limited to:, ferdinand being annoying, gossiping, hilda goneril is very cool but also I'm a bit afraid of her, lowkey marianne/hilda but I'm not sure if it justifies a tag, more fluff than angst I should imagine, other terrible teenage decisions, she's doing her best, someone please give bernadetta a hug, spoilers through chapter 10 or so, staring longingly, underage dancing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 06:27:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21795453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseisaRoseisaRose/pseuds/RoseisaRoseisaRose
Summary: "'What would you ask for?'Annette considered this question for a moment. She supposed if she was actually up in the Tower, she would feel like she had to make her wish worthwhile, to make it count. World peace or eternal happiness or something like that. But she wasn’t at the top of a tower, she was down here, sitting in the grass. And unless she had a habit of eavesdropping, the goddess probably wasn’t listening to her.But Felix was."Chapter 9, Blue Lions route. A three-parter about the dance and the Goddess Tower and the various hijinks that come along with that. Typical sappy shipping with a side order of Remire Village trauma.
Relationships: Annette Fantine Dominic/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 72
Kudos: 160





	1. Borrowed Dresses and Lost Wagers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Annette borrows a dress. Felix loses a bet. Ingrid invites too many people over to her room.

Remire Village burned. Thick, black smoke filled the air, masking the pathways that once led to houses and gardens and a village center and now contained only fiery debris and choking, screaming villagers. The Blue Lions charged through the smoke, urged on by the voices of their professor and the knights behind them and the screams for help from the villages somewhere in the distance. Blindly swinging into the fiery haze ahead of you, there was no way to tell if a villager was a civilian cowering, running, and begging for safety or a mindless, shambling shell of a human. No way to tell, that is, until they made their attack, their eyes rolled back and vacant and red around the edges.

Annette Dominic pulled herself through the smoke and bodies and the fallen, trees burning around her. She was separated from her friends, lost from her battalion, completely unable to find her way back to the main fighting force. Mindless villagers ran at her, swinging axes and clubs and rusted gardening tools, only to fall as she stretched out her hands in front of her and willed wind to sweep them away. They fell so easily – why did they fall so easily?

Stumbling around a crumbling fence that had been set ablaze long before she got there, Annette looked up as she head the sound of laughter, low and long and distorted and directly above her. She stared into the eyes of Tomas, the school librarian – except he was no longer the Tomas she knew. He was scarred and hunched over and still seemed to loom over her, his face a contorted mask of cruelty.

He spoke to her, but his words were drowned out by the screaming around her, screaming that may have been in her own head. _Savage . . . insignificant_ . . .what did he want from her? Why did he hate her? Annette didn’t have time to answer this as she threw out another burst of wind, which seemed to fly in every direction but the one she wanted. Tomas’s – Tomas’s? – magic hit her at full force, sending her flying backwards. The ground was ablaze and stone cold and hard and welcoming as she shattered into it.

Annette knew she had to keep going. She couldn’t stop here. This couldn’t be the end. Opening her eyes, she realized she was surrounded by her classmates once again, that they had found her. But as she sat up, they shifted before her eyes, their eyes becoming blank and red, their expressions cruel and bloodthirsty and somehow inhuman. Annette screamed but no sound came out. She’d lost them and she couldn’t save them.

_Annette?_

And she couldn’t save the villagers.

_Hey, Annette._

And now it was just her and the fire and the mindless, shambling shells of her former friends.

_Hey, wake up already._

Annette woke with a start, throwing her arms to the side and jerking up with a gasp. Luckily, Hilda had faster reflexes than she was willing to admit, and she easily sidestepped the flailing limbs thrown her way.

“Fun dreams, Annette?” she asked, her long pink hair falling to the side as she tilted her head to look down at the girl. “You were kind of twitching in your sleep, it was weird.”

Annette Dominic blinked as she looked around the room, her bones decidedly unbroken and no traces of smoke clinging to her. Hilda’s room was a mess, as usual, with piles of clothes scattered across the floor and stacks of unreturned library books teetering dangerously on the shelf above her desk. And yet, Annette couldn’t help but feel that Hilda’s room felt more sophisticated and refined than hers ever would be, no matter how many times she rearranged her books and planned a new scheme for decoration. Hilda was cool without trying, which was lucky for her, as she never seemed to try at much of anything.

It was not the first time Annette had taken an accidental nap in her friend’s room. Annette’s grand schemes to work harder, be stronger, do more in the past few months had tended to backfire on her, leaving her more exhausted and accident-prone than ever before. But few people, from Mercedes’s gentle suggestions to the professor’s outright directives, could convince her to take a break. Most of the time she wasn’t even sure what a break looked like; it certainly couldn’t mean staring at the ceiling and listening to your heart pound faster and faster as you ordered yourself to stop thinking and stop wasting time and fall asleep already. But Hilda had somehow managed to cajole, or trick, Annette into skipping chores or neglecting studying or cutting training short every time. Annette still wasn’t sure how Hilda did it, or what Hilda got out it. She didn’t hate the naps, though – Hilda had stocked her bed with about four dozen pillows, it was easy to fall into them and forget about the rest of the world for thirty minutes.

“Your nose twitches when you sleep, did you know that?” Hilda asked her, continuing the conversation as if Annette had replied. She had not. “And were you reciting wind spells in your sleep? You take naps to _not_ study, you know.”

Annette looked over at Hilda, trying to bring her eyes into focus and remember where she was. Right, the dream. It was a dream. This wasn’t the first time she’d had that nightmare, either. Generally dreams about recent battles faded into the background after a week or so, but Annette couldn’t seem to get Remire Village out of her head. But of course, Hilda hadn’t been there. Annette wasn’t sure what the Golden Deer House had been up to that month – she’d heard Claude mention something to Dimitri about a rebellion in the west that might have connected, but the Golden Deer seemed relatively unscathed by whatever mission they’d been sent on.

“Sorry, Hilda,” Annette said, her voice still dry from just waking up. “I was dreaming about . . . failing my certification test next week.” She hadn’t talked to anyone about her nightmares, not Mercie, not Ashe, not anyone. She’d written one letter to her mother, which she reread and threw into the fire before she could send it out. She wasn’t even sure how she would begin to tell Hilda about this, let alone if she wanted to.

Luckily, Hilda didn’t seem particularly invested in cross-interrogation. She let out a short, cheerful laugh. “You don’t ever stop, do you, Annette?” she asked. “I told you, you can skip the library today of all days. Just stay up all night next week, or something. I think that’s what Claude usually does and he always gets top marks.” She turned to look at herself in the mirror, completely losing interest in Annette’s sleeping habits.

_Today of all days_. Annette was still trying to put her brain back in the present – what was today? She looked over at Hilda, who was simultaneously pinning her hair up into an elaborate style and trying to one-handedly lace up the back of her dress, which was decidedly not her school uniform. She looked really nice, Annette thought to herself. Was she going somewhere special –

She was.

The ball was tonight.

And Annette had overslept.

Adrenaline charged through Annette’s bloodstream, jolting her fully awake. “Hilda, what time is it, how long have I been asleep?” she demanded, getting tangled in Hilda’s giant comforter as she tried to climb out of the bed. Too many pillows. “I told Mercie I’d meet her and help do Ingrid’s makeup, I can’t be late, one of us has to barricade the door in case she tries to run – ”

“Relaaaaax, Annette,” Hilda drawled, stabbing another pin into her curls. “Ingrid’s room is right next door. And anyways, we’ve still got like 2 hours before the ball even starts. Gosh, you must’ve really knocked out there, huh?” Hilda turned in the mirror, craning her head to try to see herself from the back. “Help me lace this dress up, will you? It fit perfectly when I bought it.”

Annette complied, trying to steady her heartbeat back to a normal rate as she finally untangled herself out of the pillows enough to get on her feet. The complicated criss-cross of ribbons that made up the back of Hilda’s dress were certainly stylish, but they slipped out of Annette’s fingers as she tried to tug them together.

“I’m sorry, Hilda, I’m not sure the back will close,” Annette said tentatively, hoping she wasn’t being insulting.

Hilda sighed, but sounded vaguely triumphant in her annoyance. “I _told_ Claude he can’t keep putting me on the front lines all the times. Look at my arms, Annette! I think I could beat Raphael in an arm-wrestling contest at this point. And this year’s fashions just _aren’t_ designed for broad shoulders.” She stepped towards her closet, pushing dresses out of the way and landing on the one she had in mind. “I guess we’ll have to go with my second choice. I’m absolutely going to guilt Claude into letting me stay home next month; delicate figures like mine don’t belong on the battlefield.”

Hilda pulled the second-choice dress, which looked like it cost about half the dowry of a minor noblewoman, out from the back of the closet. “What are you wearing tonight, anyways?” she asked Annette, stepping out of her rejected first-choice dress and tossing it into a pile of clothes next to her desk.

“Ummmm . . . this?” Annette asked, sitting back down on the bed and smoothing the edges of her academy uniform to cover up the wrinkles she got from taking a nap.

Hilda nearly dropped her dress on the ground in surprise. “Your school uniform?” she demanded. “You wear that thing every day!”

“Lots of people are wearing their uniforms tonight,” Annette objected. “I know Ingrid said she was going to, and I overheard Dimitri talking to Dedue and they both agreed – ”

“Yes yes, I know it’s, like, _okay_ to wear the uniform if you want to,” Hilda said impatiently. She fiddled with the clasps at the back of her newly chosen dress, which evidently didn’t face the same challenges for broad shoulders but required a great deal of flexibility to fasten properly. Annette jumped up to help her. Hilda continued, “But don’t you want to wear something different for a change? We never get the chance to dress up at this dreary school, it’s always, change into your armor for battle, Hilda, or, you can’t practice archery in stilettos, Hilda, or, it’s inappropriate to turn your school uniform into a crop top, Hilda. Aren’t you and Mercedes always buying cute things? When else are you going to wear those?”

Annette sighed. “I do have a couple of nice dresses I got earlier this year, but it’s been so cold this winter and Mercie and I got them in the summer. I don’t know if they would work. I don’t want to freeze to death during the ball, you know? The uniform just seems more practical.”

In truth, Annette was on something of a saving spree at the moment. She and Mercie did have a tendency to overspend when they went into town together, but she’d learned quickly after arriving at the academy that money ran out fast and, as Hilda lamented, that she didn’t really have anywhere to wear new dresses. Lately they’d stuck to getting scarves and pastries and quirky secondhand teapots, which were significantly cheaper and might actually see the light of day. But even with an eye towards frugality, Annette’s pocket money was running dangerously low. She hated to write to her mother – or worse, her uncle – to ask for money; she was supposed to be being so responsible at her new position in the academy. It was better to just try to stretch out her money until graduation, and that meant forgoing buying new dresses for a one-night ball. And an academy uniform would draw less attention than an out-of-season dress, so an academy uniform was her best option at the moment. There was something to be said for blending in.

But she hadn’t told Hilda this – she wasn’t sure Hilda would understand the concept of not having money to spend – and arguments of practicality had little effect on her newfound friend. Hilda frowned at Annette, making eye contact in the mirror as Annette fastened the final clip on the back of her dress. She looked, unsurprisingly, gorgeous.

“I get not wanting to wear a sundress in the middle of winter, but still,” she said, slightly pouting as she leaned forward to catch her reflection better in the mirror as she pinned up the final loose curls that were falling around her face. “You’re way too cute to waste your time tonight looking like it’s a normal Thursday afternoon. Could you wear your dancer’s outfit? That’s probably cute.”

Annette’s recent victory at the White Heron Cup had been a cause for celebration, but she wasn’t sure it presented the solution Hilda was looking for. She folded her hands and stared at them, not wanting to turn this into an argument when it really didn’t have to be one.

“I haven’t actually started practice yet; that’ll be next week some time,” she said apologetically, although she wasn’t sure why she was apologizing. “But even if I did have it, I’m not sure it’s appropriate for a school dance, given that it’s, you know, battle gear. And that it’s freezing out.”

Any one of these points may not have convinced Hilda, but all three of them seemed to work together well enough. She sunk into a slightly sulky frown, looking at her own reflection rather than at Annette. But then an idea seemed to hit Hilda; her face lit up with the same general look of epiphany that she got the first time she asked Annette to hang out with her. As if she’d realized the perfect solution for everyone involved. Leaning over to the side of her desk and retrieving her previously-rejected dress, she swirled around to present it to Annette with a swishy flourish.

“Why don’t you try this one on? I’m clearly not going to be wearing it. It might be a little bit longer on you, but the ties in the back mean it’s actually a pretty flexible fit if you haven’t had to bench press ruffians for the good of the Alliance over the past six months. I’m sure we’d be able to strap you into it.”

Annette blushed and took a step back. “Oh no, Hilda, I didn’t come here to borrow all your clothes, I’m sorry –”

“You apologize _so much_, do you know that?” Hilda laughed again, throwing the dress to Annette so that she had no choice but to catch it. “Just try it on! I promise if you hate the way it looks I will extol the virtues of the school uniform to every Blue Lions boy that will listen to me. Or any Golden Deer boy,” she added as an afterthought. “But trust me, you don’t want to waste your time with them. Today Ignatz asked me if I thought flowers had feelings.”

Things had gotten so off track that Annette wasn’t sure how to even get back to her previous protests. And the dress was awfully nice; just the sort of front-display showstopper that she and Mercie would spend ages looking at on their window-shopping trips into town. It probably wouldn’t even fit, but it couldn’t hurt to try it on.

Once again, Hilda Goneril managed to arrange the world exactly to her liking without having to ask a single favor. She cheerfully hummed a waltz to herself as she rummaged through her oversized jewelry box looking for a set of matching earrings.

***

“Doesn’t Annette look _fantastic_, Marianne?” Hilda gushed for at least the third time in the last quarter of an hour. “I really missed my calling as a seamstress, I have such an eye for things like this.”

“Um, I don’t know about that, Hilda,” Marianne said quietly. She blushed deeply as she realized how her words sounded. “I mean, you do look nice, Annette, of course. But I don’t know if Hilda should run . . . ” she trailed off into mumbles that Annette couldn’t quite make out. Hilda evidently understood her perfectly.

“Oh, you don’t have to lecture me, Marianne!” she sang cheerfully. “I get enough of that from my brother.” The three of them made their way to collect Mercedes, having picked up Marianne on the way – Annette wasn’t sure Mercedes could carry all the makeup and accessories they planned to throw at Ingrid on her own, and Hilda had been insistent that Marianne would want to join them. Hilda had looped her arm in Marianne’s as soon as she had opened the door, pulling her out into the hallway without really stopping to see if she was ready to go. As they walked, Hilda leaned into Marianne, brightly pulling her into conversation any time the melancholy girl seemed to drift away from the group. Annette would have thought it was making Marianne miserable except for the way she would occasionally smile when she thought Hilda was no longer looking at her.

“Now you must promise me you’ll dance with at least one person tonight, Marianne,” Hilda continued on, swinging her legs out in an approximation of a box step even as they continued forward. “I can’t have you hiding in the corner all night.”

Annette wasn’t sure how she managed it, but Marianne somehow seemed to retreat deeper behind her bangs. “I don’t think I will, Hilda,” she muttered

Hilda responded so quickly it was like she knew what was coming. Annette wondered how many times they’d had this exact conversation in the last 48 hours. “Marianne, you have to! We’ve spent so much time practicing the steps this month, you’re getting so good at it!”

Marianne shot a glance over at Annette, an element of change in the script they’d been over so many times. “That was for you, Hilda, you said you couldn’t remember the laendler and needed to practice.”

“It was for _us_, Marianne,” Hilda insisted, once again taking up her cheerful walking dance steps but this time pulling Marianne into a twirl as they walked. “And now we’re both the best dancers in the school – besides literal award-winner Annette here, of course. I’ll waltz with you myself if there’s space on your dance card after all these noblemen throw themselves at your feet once they see how wonderful you are – oh! Hello boys!” Hilda called, letting go of Marianne and waving wildly at two approaching figures.

“Hilda! And friends!” Sylvain called out in reply, returning Hilda’s energetic wave. “Don’t you three look lovely. Ball preparations underway already?” With the hand that was not waving, Sylvain was half-guiding, half-dragging one very disheveled and very annoyed Felix Fraldarius, his arm thrown around his should with a closeness that looked as though it had recently been a headlock.

Several things about this scene surprised Annette. She was surprised Sylvain was out training instead of lining up a five consecutive dates for the dance tonight – or, more realistically, hiding from the five consecutive dates once they all found out about each other. She was surprised to see Felix so beat up, with a his shirt torn in several places and a black eye already beginning to form underneath a cut that jagged across the side of his forehead. Generally Felix emerged from the battleground relatively unscathed; even on tournament days that were catered to other swordsmen he was a hard target to hit.

She was also surprised that he looked even more handsome with his face scratched up and his hair threatening to fall to his shoulders and half his shirt buttons undone than he did when he sat next to her in class, pristine and perfect and so sharp she was fairly sure she’d cut herself if she tapped his shoulder. She probably shouldn’t have been surprised by this revelation (she’d read books, after all; many of them made claims to that effect), but there was a difference between knowing something theoretically and seeing it in person. This last shock made her rather wish that Hilda hadn’t called out to them – Mercie's room was less than 30 feet away, she could easily have slipped into it without Sylvain or Felix seeing her.

But Sylvain had already dragged Felix close enough to the group for conversation, so escape routes we’re hard to come by. Hilda beamed up at him, dragging both Marianne and Annette forward with him.

“Ball preparations have been underway for _hours_, Sylvain. We’re on our way to pick up Mercedes and then go bug Ingrid to actually wear some makeup tonight. Don’t we look nice, though?” Hilda executed a perfect twirl at this, her pinned-up curls swinging beautifully.

“Truly, I have never seen such perfect pictures of beauty before me,” Sylvain said with too much emotion to actually seem sincere. He glanced over at Annette. “That’s a knockout dress there, Annie. You should wear that one to class more often.”

Annette laughed despite herself. “You can take up the dress code policy with Lady Rhea, if you want, Sylvain. I’ve got better things to do.”

“I don’t think I will; I do need to concentrate sometimes, you know,” Sylvain said with a smile. Annette blushed; she never was able to match Sylvain in a verbal spar – her weaknesses were compliments and innuendos, and he excelled at both.

Oddly, Annette was not the only one to blush at Sylvain’s flirtatiousness. With a flush that spread through his cheeks and down to his neck, Felix finally managed to untangle himself from his friend’s grip, and gave him an angry elbow to the side.

“I’ll never understand how you’re able to talk so much even after people stop paying attention to you, Sylvain,” Felix grumbled at his friend. “We've wasted enough of their time; let’s go.”

“Don’t listen to him, he’s just in a bad mood,” Sylvain cut in, taking his arm off of Felix’s shoulder and stepping closer to the trio. Felix seemed to collapse into himself, pulling himself as far away from the group as possible without actually walking - or running – away from them. “We had a friendly bet going on in our sparring match today. I challenged him on the grounds that – ”

“Wait,” Hilda interrupted Sylvain, her eyes shining with curiosity. “_You_ challenged_ Felix _to a sparring match? Was a girl watching?”

“You wound me, Hilda darling, I do spar sometimes. I’m not a complete wastrel,” Felix said with a wink that seemed directed at the entire group. “_Anyways_, I challenged him on the condition that if I won, he’d stop being an whiny idiot about having to go to the ball tonight and ask at least one lovely maiden to dance with him. His choice! My terms were generous.”

“And I accepted,” growled Felix, “On the grounds that if I won, Sylvain wouldn’t talk to me for the next 25 years.”

“Something like that!” said Sylvain brightly. “I didn’t really write down your conditions so I can’t remember them anymore.”

Hilda put a hand on her hip in mock admonishment. “It’s not very sporting of you to forget the terms of your agreement already, Sylvain, so soon after losing,” she said teasingly. “Even if they were a bit extreme.”

“You wound me again, Lady Goneril!” Sylvain said, his smile growing even wider. “As it happens, I won this particular round. I believe that leaves us at, what, 25 and 6 for the year?”

“Twenty-eight and three,” Felix snapped. “You stood me up for twelve of those.”

Sylvain’s smile was unchanged. “I win when it matters,” he said triumphantly.

Hilda’s smile matched his, at this point. “Since you’re so good at getting people to dance, Sylvain, you need to settle this argument with me and Marianne.” Marianne made a few strangled sounds that might have been protests, but Hilda ignored them. “ Tell her she needs to dance to night. I keep telling her she’s going to be the belle of the ball once people see her dance – here, let me show you how good she is.”

Before anyone could protest – and there was probably a lot of protesting to go around between the five of them – Hilda had dragged Sylvain and Marianne to an open patch of grass and flung them together, leaving Annette and Felix to the side as witnesses.

“I’ll count you off – don’t _worry_, Marianne, you’re going to do great,” Hilda instructed. “Five-six-seven-eight!”

Annette halfway expected Felix to run away, perhaps from Garreg Mach altogether, while people were distracted. But when she looked away from spectacle in front of her, he was still there, looking at her. As she made eye contact he immediately looked back at the dancers. Then at the ground. Then at her again.

This is going great, Annette thought ruefully.

“You look nice,” Felix finally muttered to Annette after a beat. She wasn’t sure it was a compliment; his delivery made it seem like it had been dragged out of him by some unholy force.

“Thanks,” she said in reply. With characteristic honesty, and to fill up the empty silence between them, she added, “You look terrible.”

Felix laughed slightly, rolling his eyes to mask any sense that he might enjoy talking to her. “Yeah, well, Sylvain got a couple of lucky hits in. We can’t all attack from 30 yards away, you know. Some duels are dangerous.”

It was Annette’s turn to roll her eyes. “Magic is all fun and games until a fire ball conks you on the back of the head. You talk a big game given that I was treating you for third degree burns just last week.”

“And you passed your bishop certification with flying colors. You’re welcome.”

“That’s next week.”

“Well, you will. Everyone knows that.” Felix said it so naturally Annette couldn’t help but think he believed it. Sometimes it was hard to tell if he was teasing her or not. She faltered under his moment of sincerity, all her barbed replies vanishing before she had a chance to use them.

“Sorry you lost the bet, though,” she added, suddenly desperate to change the subject. “If it helps, I’m sure you’ll be able to convince someone to dance with you after that dustup. There’s got to be some girl that’s into the whole black-eye look.”

She hoped she would make Felix laugh again, but his genuine wince when she brought up the ball made her realize she’d gravely miscalculated her choice of subject change. He was really dreading this.

“I always come off looking like such an idiot at these things, Annette. Tonight really seems more Sylvain’s deal,” he said, absently bringing his hand up to the back of his neck. “Or, you know, Hilda’s. Or yours.” He looked down at her, seeming to actually realize for the first time that she wasn’t wearing her typical school uniform. Annette felt her cheeks flush as he trailed off, looking at her.

“It’s actually my first ball!” she said brightly, once again to fill the silence. “I always skipped them to study at Fhirdiad.”

This broke Felix out of his distracted staring. “What, really?” he asked. “I’ve been forced to go to these since I was like six. Didn’t you have them growing up?”

Annette laughed, a little too lightly. “I would peek through the banister at my parents coming home from stuff like this when I was a kid, but my mother always said that ‘balls were for grown girls’. I can hear her telling me that now, actually. I think she was looking forward to me going to one. But by the time I was old enough we’d moved in with my uncle, and he’s not really into fun things.”

She was babbling, she knew she was babbling. But she suddenly felt very stupid – silly little Annette in her borrowed dress who had never been to a ball before, trying to carry on a conversation with the next Duke of Fraldarius who had been dancing since he was seven, currently looked like he’d just lost a fight with a flock of angry geese, and was still stupidly handsome. But if Felix minded her mindless chatter, he didn’t show it. He reached up to scratch the back of his neck again.

“I wouldn’t have called that,” he said, and it took Annette a moment to realize he meant her inexperience with formal occasions, not her general family connections. “You’re, you know. Really good at dancing.”

Annette smiled at him. “Well hey, you have to dance with someone tonight,” she said shyly. “Maybe you can show me how this whole thing works.”

“You don’t want that,” Felix said with a sudden harshness in his voice that caught Annette by surprise. “I’m . . . I’m really terrible at dancing. These things are usually awful, anyways. Dance with Sylvain, he’s a better choice.”

“What am I a better choice for?” Sylvain cut in as if hearing his name had caused him to actually materialize next to them. Whatever impromptu dancing lessons Hilda had devised had clearly come to an end. “I mean, whatever it is, I’m absolutely a better choice for it, but I like to know the details.”

Annette was, for the first time, relieved to hear Sylvain cut in. She had no idea how to respond to Felix just shutting down like that. She stared at him in vague shock, before realizing she should break eye contact lest he see the hurt in her eyes. She glanced behind her shoulder to see Hilda and Marianne approaching the group, Hilda all smiles and Marianne looking somehow even more miserable than usual. Annette slid back to join them, melting away from Felix as Hilda threw an arm around her and pulled her into their group.

“Shut up, Sylvain,” Felix snapped, looking at Annette and not at his friend. “It doesn’t matter.”

Sylvain ignored this in his usual genial manner. “Well at any rate, I think I’ve convinced both of these fine Golden Deer ladies to favor me with a dance tonight,” he sang brightly, winking at Marianne, who turned a shade greener. “You’d better and hurry and catch up if you’re going to dance with more people than me, as we agreed.”

Felix bristled. “We agreed on absolutely nothing of the sort. That isn’t even close to the conditions we agreed on.”

“Is it not?” Sylvain asked brightly. “Well, I didn’t really write anything down, as I said, so you can hardly expect me to remember.” He turned to Annette, as if following Felix’s gaze. “How are you holding up, Annie? Swarmed with the endless invitations that no doubt come with being an official White Heron winner? Can I convince you to spare a dance for me?”

Annette managed a weak smile that didn’t explicitly wish death upon Sylvain – a diplomatic victory. “I’m sure I can fit you in, Sylvain. Always an honor to be your third choice.”

Sylvain clutched his heart in mock horror. “Annette, you’ve been hanging around Hilda too much, to say such cruel things to me. You’re may be my third _dance_, but you’re always my first _choice_.” Resisting another wink, which Annette imagined was his own diplomatic victory, Sylvain instead threw his arm around Felix once more. “But we’ve kept you for far too long, and I’m sure Mercedes is eager to see you all! I’m sure Ingrid is not, but that just motivates me even more to get out of your hair. Until tonight, ladies!” Sylvain flashed a dazzling smile at the group and cheerfully continued down the path to the bath houses, dragging a begrudging Felix beside him.

Hilda dropped both her arms from Annette’s shoulders and Marianne’s waist and took a few dainty steps forward. Annette had lost track at this point of when Hilda was dancing and when she was just walking. “Wear something nice tonight, boys,” she called after them. “We dressed up for you! It’s equality!”

Marianne looked over at Annette, her bangs flopping back into her eyes and she craned her neck downward. “Do you think,” she whispered, “If I hide out all night in the graveyard, that anyone will think to look for me there?”

Annette looked at the retreating figures of Sylvain and Felix, one absolutely jubilant and the other practically a walking corpse.

“If you do, do you think there’s room for two?” she asked grimly.

***

There was not enough space for all of them in Ingrid’s room.

Garreg Mach dormitories were hardly designed for student parties, a fact lamented by most of the student population at one time or another. Even an afternoon tea with a friend was surprisingly cramped, as Mercedes and Annette had soon discovered once the cold winter weather chased them indoors from the gardens on their afternoons off. And Annette had certainly regretted bringing so many boxes of makeup and jewelry when Ingrid had opened the door to their knock and revealed Bernadetta crouched on the bed behind her (“I wanted her to get out and see people, it’s _good for her_ to see people,” Ingrid had hissed in a whisper that was absolutely overheard by the entirety of the room).

Still, with Ingrid firmly planted in the chair next to her desk, with Annette and Mercedes frantically doing her makeup by committee, with Marianne and Bernadetta curled up on opposite ends of Ingrid’s bed in furious competition to see who could take up the least amount of space, and with Hilda swanning around the room in equal parts snooping through Ingrid’s stuff and practicing her dancing, there was almost enough room for the group.

Almost, thought Annette, as Hilda bumped her elbow, sending a sampler set of eye shadows flying.

“Sorry dear,” said Hilda absently, leaning over to pick up the palette and glancing at it. “Oh, but you don’t want to use this one, anyways. It’s very 1177, I don’t think anyone uses that shade of plum anymore. I have more makeup than I know what to do with, should I have brought some? Should I go back to my room and get some?”

“I think we’ll be alright, Hilda, but that’s so kind of you,” said Mercedes without a hint of irony. Annette felt her annoyance at being jostled and having her makeup called out-of-date gently fade away when Mercie smiled – nothing seemed to ruffle her best friend, and _everything_ seemed to ruffle Annette. The contrast was calming.

Mercedes continued, “I think we’re almost done with Ingrid’s makeup anyways – if you could just pass me that brush for one second, Annie, dear.”

“Are you sure about that color?” asked Ingrid nervously, eyeing the bright pink powder that Mercedes was holding. “It seems a little . . . much. For me.”

“Don’t worry!” Mercedes said cheerfully, taking the brush from Annette and applying the blush to Ingrid’s face before she could protest. “No one will even know it’s there once I blend it out.”

Hilda evidently decided she had caused enough chaos, or at least learned everything of interest from Ingrid’s various belongings. She flopped on the bed between Bernadetta and Marianne as if there was room for three – objectively, there was not – and fixed her eyes on Bernadetta, her silky skirt flowing over onto both girls.

“So, Bernie,” she said, her voice honey-smooth with interest. “What’s it like having Manuela as your house professor? Is it true your class is canceled half the time because she’s too hungover to teach? Maybe I’ll transfer.”

Bernadetta turned a brilliant shade of red at the realization that other people in the room could, in fact, both see her and speak to her. “Who told you that?” she demanded. “It wasn’t me. I never said anything!”

“Of course not!” Hilda assured her. “I never said you did. I heard it from Claude who heard it from Lorenz who heard it from Sylvain who heard it from Dorothea. I’d just rather hear it from _you_.” On this last word she leaned forward with such a kind smile that Bernadetta seemed to both remember and forget how to breathe at the same time. On the bright side, her cheeks started to return to more or less their original shade.

Bernadetta glanced nervously at the door, then said in a half stage-whisper, “She doesn’t show up sometimes, but Edie usually makes us stay anyways. Sometimes we get Seteth as a sub.”

Hilda’s laugh was gleeful. “Amazing! Have you ever tried telling him all the wrong names and seeing if he’d notice? I don’t think he would.”

Mercedes, meanwhile, had put the final finishing flourish on Mercedes’s makeup, and pulled Annette away from the conversation to act as final consultant. “What do you think, Annie?” she asked softly.

Her promise to blend in the brighter colors had actually held true. Annette wasn’t sure anyone would be able to tell Ingrid was wearing makeup unless they were paying attention, except for a rather bold swoop of eyeliner that Annette had insisted on trying. But Annette was paying attention, and she couldn’t help but be delighted with the results – Ingrid may have kicked her feet up at having to try on makeup at all, but their careful work had managed to bring out her eyes and frame her face in a way that made her look like she could be off the cover of those books of knights and princesses that she and Ashe were constantly devouring.

“Ingrid, you look fantastic,” she breathed. “Goddess, I would _kill_ for your cheekbones, you know that?”

“Here, see for yourself,” Mercedes said, awkwardly spinning Ingrid towards the mirror on her desk and pushing it towards her. It wobbled slightly as she moved it away from the wall. “Nothing too bright, right?”

Ingrid surveyed herself in the mirror for the first time with a skeptical expression. But when she back at Annette and Mercedes, eagerly peering over her shoulder into her reflection, her frown softened. “It looks . . . nice?” she offered hesitantly. She turned them and smiled, saying with more genuine enthusiasm, “Thank you both. This was kind of fun.”

Mercedes giggled. “We’ll take that as high praise, Ingrid. Annie, do you want me to do yours next?”

Annette looked up; she had been peering at her own reflection now. “I think I’m actually good with what I’ve got right now, Mercie.” She had been frantically applying foundation and blush for herself between Mercedes’s requests for input on their joint work on Ingrid. “This dress is so fancy I kind of don’t want to over-do it, you know?” She turned back to Ingrid. “Do you want any help with your hair, Ingrid? My mother used to let me put braids in her hair before she went to stuff like this, so I don’t want to brag but I can get pretty fancy.”

Ingrid looked up at her skeptically. “How old were you in this scenario?”

Annette shrugged. “Like eight? I’ve gotten better.”

She half expected Ingrid to actually make a run for the door at this point, but instead she just laughed and gave a shrug of her own. “I guess it couldn't hurt,” she said. “Mercedes, do I need to get out of your way?” Mercie had been setting out her own makeup supplies in front of the mirror. She frowned, surveying the situation.

“I think we can make it work . . . if you turn like _this_ . . . and Annie stands behind you _here_ . . . and I sit _here_.” At this, Mercedes sat down on Ingrid’s lap, leaning forward to pull the mirror towards her once more. “I’m not too heavy, am I?” she asked, looking back at Ingrid.

Ingrid laughed again. “Last week Sylvain accidentally threw a bandit directly into me and I managed to stay upright. I think he was trying to impress me but I’m still not sure how. You’re fine.”

“We need bigger rooms,” Annette muttered to them both as she took up the left side of Ingrid’s hair and started dividing it into strands for a braid.

As Annette and Mercedes each settled into silent concentration, Hilda’s voice filtered back into their periphery conversation.

“So what’s the deal with Monica, do you know?” she was asking Bernadetta. “My working theory is that she’s trying to murder Edie and take over her life, but I’m still building evidence for that one.”

“Aw, Cethleann,” murmured Ingrid to no one, looking over at Bernadetta, who had crumpled herself into a ball so tightly that Annette was worried she might be folding her organs in on themselves.

“Hey Bernadetta,” Ingrid called, breaking into the conversation. “Tell them about all the stuff we shot yesterday.”

Annette wasn’t sure it was the best conversation starter, but it certainly got everyone’s attention.

Bernadetta unfolded slightly. “What?” she asked nervously.

Ingrid beamed, glancing around the room before Annette was able to force her head back into proper braiding position. “We went out with Petra yesterday to do some hunting for the feast tonight,” she explained. “Petra was the best of the group, obviously, but I swear Bernadetta got like half the stuff you’ll see tonight. She shot a grouse right out of the sky with a single shot, I swear. It was incredible.”

Bernadetta smiled softly. “It wasn’t that hard. They fly slow.”

“What does that even mean?” asked Hilda, lazily resting her head on Marianne’s shoulder.

Ingrid pressed on. “Anyways, I snuck a look into the kitchens on my way up here, and when you see the food they have out tonight, you’ll have Bernadetta to thank. They’re doing this sauce with, like, apples in it? I’m not sure. It smelled amazing.” A moment of panic crossed over her face, and she grabbed Mercedes’s arm suddenly. “Hey, I can still eat with lipstick on, right? It won’t rub off or anything?”

Mercedes gave her a reassuring smile. “You don’t worry about a thing. It won’t, and Annie and I can keep an eye on you all night and let you know if anything smudges.”

Hilda cut in, “You probably won’t even have time to eat, Ingrid, with all the dancing we’re going to be doing.” She probably meant this as encouragement, but Annette felt Ingrid’s shoulders stiffen in horror at such a suggestion. Hilda continued, “Do you have anyone lined up to dance with yet? I’m afraid Marianne and I have stolen Sylvain for the first few dances.”

Marianne mumbled, “You can definitely have my dance if you want, Ingrid. I do not mind.”

Annette could not actually see Ingrid’s face, but she could feel the eye-roll radiate from her body without actually seeing it. “Keep him, Marianne,” Ingrid said. “I promise you that’s not an invitation I was waiting on.”

“Do you like dancing, Ingrid?” asked Mercedes, not looking at her as she applied her eyeliner.

“I do, actually,” Ingrid said. “It’s kind of like a fun puzzle, right? But it definitely doesn’t have to be with _Sylvain_. I can probably guilt Dimitri into dancing with me for a couple of songs, he’s tall enough to make the twirls pretty fun. Or Felix, if I can find whatever corner he’s lurking in. He’s a pretty good lead even if he glares at you the whole time.”

Hilda looked directly at Annette and smirked. Annette did not like that smirk. “I think you’ll have a hard time getting Felix away from _somebody’s _side tonight,” she said merrily, her grin to Annette widening. Annette wondered why they didn’t put more safety exits in the student dorms. The fire hazards were frankly unacceptable.

Ingrid, who was forced to stare straight ahead for braiding purposes, didn’t pick up on any of this. “How do you mean?” she asked with a slight frown. “He is coming tonight, right? Sylvain had some cockamamie scheme that he_ swore_ was going to work –”

“No, no, he’ll be there,” Hilda said lightly, her eyes shining. “I just mean you’re going to have to pull him away from Annette. We ran into him on our way here, and the way he was undressing her with his eyes was downright _scandalous_.”

Ingrid swiveled her head back to look at her friend. “What, really?” she exclaimed, looking a little too amused by this for Annette’s liking.

“Face forward!” Annette blurted out, yanking the partially-finished braid backwards and taking Ingrid with it. Ingrid gave a yelp and looked away. Which only solved a fraction of Annette’s problems. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Hilda,” Annette added. “Ingrid can dance with whoever she wants.”

Hilda had the audacity to look surprised. She continued, “I mean, he _did_ ask you to dance, right? Goddess knows he had plenty of time while Sylvain was butchering the steps with Marianne.”

Annette grimaced. She didn’t mean to, but she did. She said, “I mean, not really? Kind of the opposite, in fact. I think he’d rather dance with literally anyone else.”

Hilda visibly bristled at this news. “That doesn’t make any sense at all. If a guy was looking at me like that I’d be sending out_ wedding _announcements,” she lamented. “What an idiot. Guys are the worst, aren’t they, Bernie?”

Bernadetta jumped at hearing her name and gave Hilda a panicked look. The question seemed loaded. “Um, yes?” she ventured hesitantly. Marianne nodded sagely and patted Hilda’s arm a few times for comfort. Annette suspected this was another conversation she was well-rehearsed in.

Ingrid craned her neck up again to look at Annette directly. She smiled and said in a voice just above a whisper, “I wouldn’t put much stock into what Felix says when he gets flustered. He’s a total disaster at social stuff.” She thought for a moment, then added brightly, “I’m sure we can get Dimitri to dance with you tonight. His manners are impeccable, unlike any of his friends.”

Annette couldn’t help but feel that Ingrid’s look of sympathy was almost as bad as Felix’s look of momentary panic when she suggested they dance together. But it didn’t seem fair to ruin the evening just because she had been slighted. She managed a small smile at her friend.

“Face forward,” she whispered, starting more gently on the right side of Ingrid’s braids.

Hilda had the good sense to change the conversation.

“The dancing is almost – _almost_, mind you – not even the most important part of the evening,” she said with a wicked smile, scanning the room to make sure she had everyone’s full attention. “Is anyone planning on sneaking up to the Goddess Tower tonight? Any rendezvous plans?”

Marianne coughed slightly and put her hand on Hilda arm, saying softly, “People might not want to talk about it if they have plans, Hilda.”

“It’s all in good fun, Marianne, people can lie if they’re that embarrassed,” Hilda said. “Bernadetta, you’re blushing. Tell me, tell me!”

Bernadetta was indeed blushing, and blushed even harder at this. “This is just what my face looks like, Hilda!” she squealed, moving so far away from the girl that she almost tumbled off Ingrid’s bed. “And no, I’m not going up into any stupid _towers_. I’m just fine with my feet on the ground, thank you.”

“Okay, but like, you do know the legend, right Bernie?” Hilda asked, leaning towards Bernadetta eagerly. Bernadetta teetered dangerously close to the edge.

“Of course she does, everyone’s heard that old story a million times before,” Ingrid cut in, saving Bernadetta from further cross-examination. “Meet your true love, make a wish to the goddess, live forever, blah blah blah.

“I think you’re mixing up a couple of fables there, Ingrid,” Annette said. “Don't move your head so much, this part is tricky.”

Hilda giggled. “I don’t really think anyone believes the legends anymore, anyways,” she said, leaning back against Marianne and giving Bernadetta space to crawl back onto the bed properly. “Claude says people just use it as an excuse to sneak off and make out somewhere. Which obviously does not change my question about everyone’s plans.”

“I think it’s a lovely thought,” said Mercedes brightly. “To be able to speak to the Goddess directly, not just through prayers, and to have someone by your side while you do it? I would go if someone asked me. I would wish for all of us here to be happy forever.”

“Has anyone asked you?” Hilda sat up eagerly.

“No, they haven’t,” Mercedes replied primly. “I just think it’s a nice thought.”

Hilda sunk back down. “That’s a shame; I’d like to be happy forever.” She flashed that wicked smile at Mercedes again. “Maybe I’ll send Sylvain your way during the dance; you could probably get him to wish for anything if you batted your eyelashes a couple of times.”

This elicited the response Hilda had no doubt been seeking all the while, as the room erupted into a chorus of giggled (led by Annette) and groans (led by Ingrid). Mercedes was the only one who seemed unconcerned by such a suggestion, merely smiling to herself a little more as she leaned in to get a closer look in the mirror. Marianne grabbed Hilda’s arm and exclaimed “Hilda, really!” with an incredulous stare. Hilda only laughed, delighted at the chaos she caused.

“It’s fine, it’s _fine_,” she said, patting Marianne’s hand. “Mercedes is the most respectful suggestion of any of us; she’s the only one who we know for sure would actually pray and not just try to kiss him.”

“Ew,” whispered Ingrid under her breath.

“What would you wish for, Annie?” Mercedes asked, turning to Annette with a warm smile and completely ignoring the previous thread of conversation.

Annette felt the entire room swivel its collective gaze towards her. Even Marianne looked at her with vague curiosity, absently brushing her bangs back momentarily.

“I, um.” Annette frowned. “I never thought about it? It’s not like anyone’s asked me to go up there.”

Mercedes laughed, and it was light and musical and made Annette feel at home. “Of course not, silly! No one’s saying that,” she chided gently. “It’s just a fun game, is all.”

Ingrid craned her neck to look up and back at Annette. Annette didn’t have the heart to tell her that she’d messed up the ends of the braid – no one would notice by candlelight, anyways. “Just tell them you’d wish for a really cool weapon,” she advised with a completely straight face. “That’s what I always do, and I’ve gotten some great knives for my birthday as a result.”

Annette smiled down at Ingrid and Mercedes. She’d seen them every day for ten months, but there was something about the excitement and the preparation and the way Ingrid was smiling at her own joke (maybe she didn’t actually ask for knives for her birthday?) that made them look so beautiful to Annette that she could hardly stand it. She opened her mouth to tell them that she wouldn’t wish for anything, because she had everything she wanted right here.

The room seemed to shift slightly. And for a flash, Annette saw them as they had appeared in her dream – bloodied and eyeless and with a fury that was equal parts mindless and unstoppable.

She blinked for a moment or two and the room was back to normal. Mercedes was saying something about an endless supply of sweets that Annette couldn’t quite focus her mind on.

Remire Village burned. She couldn’t save anyone.

“Let Annette answer, already,” Hilda said impatiently. “I want to hear this.” Annette turned to her wordlessly.

The Goddess couldn’t turn back time (Annette was pretty sure). She couldn’t bring people back from the dead.

She probably _could _make the nightmares stop, but that seemed like a selfish request. Annette would rather die than let Mercie know she was selfish.

The room was still staring at her. Hadn’t she said anything yet? She must have not said anything yet. Annette swallowed.

“I don’t know,” she said, her voice sounding strangely strangled to her ears. “World peace or something, I guess?”

Hilda groaned and flopped back on to Marianne. “You Blue Lions girls are so _weird _and _boring_,” she said without any real malice in either insult. “You could wish for _anything_! You could wish for a pony, but like, one that could _fly_!”

“We already have those, Hilda,” Ingrid said flatly. “Those, like, exist. In the world.”

Hilda absently waved this point away. “I’d have to brainstorm something. We all know if I’m going up to that Goddess Tower it’s to kiss people and that’s it.”

“Anyways, your hair is done now, Ingrid,” Annette broke in, a little too loudly, a little too cheerfully. “What time is it, is it time to go?”

“The ball was supposed to start thirty minutes ago,” Marianne said. Annette was vaguely impressed by how her voice managed to convey that much smug triumph while still remaining completely flat.

Bernadetta actually did fall off the bed at this.

“We’re late?” she exclaimed. “This is terrible! Everyone is going to see us walk in! Everyone is going to see us –”

“Calm down, Bernadetta, it’ll be alright,” Ingrid said calmly, standing up and reaching out a hand to help the panicked girl off the floor. “It’s going to be chaos down there; no one is actually going to notice our comings and goings.”

“It’s fashionable to be late, everyone knows that,” Hilda added, looping her arm around Marianne once more and pulling them both to the door. “Arriving 15 minutes late is actually arriving 30 minutes early, if you think about it.” This math was confusing enough to distract Bernadetta from her panic, but she still clung to Ingrid as they made their way out of the room.

Annette started to follow the group out the door, but Mercedes intercepted her.

“Let me fix one last part of your makeup, Annie, we didn’t get to spend much time on it,” she said, gently turning Annette’s face up to meet hers and carefully applying a final flicker of powder – Annette wasn’t even sure what she was doing. After a moment of solemn concentration, Mercedes let Annette’s chin drop and beamed at her.

“There!” she said triumphantly. “You look perfect.” She paused and frowned slightly. “Annie, you’re shaking. Is everything okay?

Annette looked down at her hands, which were quivering slightly. Hard to cast magic when your fingers can’t stay in proper formation. But then, she wouldn’t need to cast magic tonight. They were safe at Garreg Mach.

“I’m fine, Mercie,” she said, forcing a smile. “Just, you know, kind of overexcited. My first ball and everything!”

  
Mercie gave a delighted laugh. “That’s right, we’re finally going to one together! Oh, Annie, isn’t this just what you dreamed?”

  
Annette refused to let her smile drop. “Just what I dreamed, Mercie,” she said, reaching out and giving her best friend’s hand a squeeze.

Hilda poked her head back in the door. “Hey, World Peace! You’re missing our grand entrance.”

“Coming, Hilda!” Annette called out, suddenly breaking into a genuine giggle as she pulled Mercedes out the door behind her.

In a cloud of ruffling dresses and scattered laughter, the girls made their way out into the cold winter air and towards the candlelight and music coming from the Great Hall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hilda Goneril can absolutely lift a tank over her head like Wonder Woman and I personally think that’s very cool of her.
> 
> I dunno, this was supposed to just be about the ball, but when I was in high school half the fun of dances was getting ready for them with your friends, so I guess this is a prequel chapter? Always thought it was kind of mood whiplash that the creepiest chapter in the first half of the game is followed by an adorable and romantic dance which is then followed by typical Fire Emblem parent-death. Kind of an odd sandwich! So here I go smushing all of the moods together; I would also have nightmares if I saw a bunch of dark magic turn random villagers into death zombies. 
> 
> I have bits and pieces of the next chapter written, but it promises to be even more of a meandering nightmare than this one was, so it might take a minute. Please comment and tell me what you think will happen in the next chapter; I will take the best ideas and tell you that you were right all along.
> 
> (I kid, I kid. I mostly, vaguely, know where I’m going with this. But if you want to hear about anyone/anything in particular, do let me know. I don’t plan to follow 6 different characters next chapter but I do love all these girls dearly and will gladly write about any of them. Maybe in a different story altogether, I don’t know.) 
> 
> The longer title for this chapter is “I wonder that you will still be talking, Signor Benedick. Nobody marks you.” That’s a bit long for a title and a bit unrelated for an epigraph so you get it here, instead.
> 
> Until next time!


	2. An Intimate Affair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sylvain plays wingman for Felix. Annette plays whatever the opposite of a wingman is for Mercedes. Hilda and Claude embark on a noble quest.

In truth, Dimitri was probably not the only boy in Garreg Mach who could adequately execute a twirl with Annette. She was short enough that she fit neatly under the extended elbows of most students. Still, she had to give Ingrid credit that he _was_ an impeccable dancer – and, from his stuttered congratulations on her victory in the White Heron Cup and sincere compliments on her own dancing abilities, one with impeccable manners to match.

Annette didn’t put much more stock in Dimitri’s compliments than Sylvain’s. A crown prince had to be good at diplomacy if he was going to survive very long in the world. Dimitri had never been anything but nice to her; she wasn’t sure he was capable of anything but a kind of bland, generic niceness. But when you’ve offered someone (say, a sullen friend of the prince with no manners to speak of) a piece of your heart and they’ve thrown it to the ground and stomped on it, bland, generic niceness can be quite soothing.

She was being melodramatic. By and large, the ball was going quite well.

For all of Sylvain’s insincerities, he was right that she wouldn’t be short of dance partners that evening. There was the aforementioned dance with Dimitri that Ingrid had arranged a little too eagerly and with too wide of a grin as she led him over to where Annette was sitting. There was the promised dance with Sylvain, who had only stepped on her feet twice, but who asked a little too quickly after the song was done if she thought Mercedes would be interested in dancing with him, and if yes, did Mercedes prefer her long walks in the moonlight to happen after the dancing was over or while it was still going on. There was a dance with Ashe where he stepped on her feet _several_ times, but only in retaliation for whenever she brought up if he was going to ask Dedue to dance or just stand there staring at him all evening. (“I’m working on it, Annette,” he whispered frantically. “You have to trust my process.”)

Annette collapsed into a chair next to Mercie, next to a table where an impressive banquet of food was laid out before them. She shook her arms gingerly. Caspar had been a talented but enthusiastic dancer, and while her toes remained uncrushed by his boots, he jerked her around the room in such an overabundant caricature of the gavotte they were doing that she had begun to suspect he was doubling it as strength training for the week. Certainly, she was going to count it as her strength training for the rest of the month.

“Caspar’s a real sweetheart,” Mercie said sweetly. She’d used a variation on this sentiment following each of Annette’s dances. Dimitri had been “talented”; Ashe was “a darling.” Syvlain, oddly enough, was deemed “handsome” – Annette had yet to decide whether this was a sincere compliment or if her friend just couldn’t think of anything else redeeming to say.

“Yeah, I wish him and Lindhardt all the best,” Annette muttered, turning around to snag a dessert that looked lemon-y from the table behind her. “If anyone can wake that boy up, it’s Caspar. How was Ferdinand?”

Mercie’s smile stayed in place, but the way she raised her eyebrows slightly told Annette all she needed to know. “The dancing was nice. The conversation was . . . enlightening,” she said, pausing a bit too long before the final word. “Ferdinand had much to tell me about the duties and requirements of the nobility at these types of events.”

Annette let out a burst of laughter. “Aren’t you lucky?” she said, grinning at her friend.

“He also asked about my father,” Mercedes added, her voice lowering slightly and her smile disappearing altogether.

Annette stopped laughing. “Baron Martriz?”

“Bartels.”

Annette could feel her cheeks growing warm with anger and she shot a glare around the ballroom, trying to find the Black Eagles student. Ferdinand had cornered Hubert and was talking animatedly, waving a fork dramatically and occasionally flinging bits of whipped cream and chocolate cake towards him.

“Do you want me to go light his cravat on fire?” Annette offered. “No one would believe I did it on purpose.”

“It’s okay, he didn’t know. It’s not like he was trying to be cruel,” Mercedes said glumly. “Besides, if we wait long enough it looks like Hubert might do that for you.” She looked over at Annette and gave her a smile that Annette was desperate to believe was real. “How’s the lemon bar?”

“Pretty good,” Annette said. “Not as good as yours. Want some?”

Mercedes broke off a piece and they snacked in silence, watching the dancing couples on the ballroom floor ahead of them. Claude had pulled their professor onto the dance floor and was leading her through the very simple basic steps, laughing every time she fell against him. It was strange to see her stumble at something – Annette had always secretly suspected their instructor was capable of anything and flustered by nothing.

“Look,” Mercedes whispered to Annette, nudging her shoulder and pointing across the hall. “I guess Ingrid is willing to put up with Sylvian some of the time, after all.”

The two were easy to spot among the crowd; Ingrid with the long-legged perfect posture that Annette always envied and Sylvain with his bright red hair. The two danced together as if it was second nature, Ingrid’s graceful, exact movements a surprising compliment to Sylvain’s showy but loose interpretation of the steps. Annette noticed with distress that Ingrid’s braids were already starting to come loose around the edges, unable to withstand the wild rush of motion as Sylvain guided her into an overly dramatic dip. She also noticed, with less distress, how happy Ingrid looked, clutching Sylvain’s shoulder for balance with one hand as she aimed an ineffective punch at his other arm. She was laughing even when she rolled her eyes as he pulled her back to her feet.

“What is _with_ those two?” Annette murmured to Mercedes, offering her another broken piece of the lemon bar.

Mercedes shrugged as she took the piece. “They’ve been friends for years, right? They must be well-practiced in dancing together if they’ve grown up together.”

“Yeah, but like . . . do they hate each other? Are they going to elope before the year is out? I never can tell,” Annette said, her mouth full of the last bites of the lemon bar.

“Friends are like that sometimes,” Mercie replied. “Maybe they don’t know themselves.”

“It is nice to see her smiling, though, she’s always so serious in class and stuff,” Annette mused. She stared at the couple for another moment, then added, “Ingrid really is good at dancing, isn’t she?”

“She mentioned once that her father insisted she excel at lessons,” Mercie said, her voice lowering once again. “He’s awfully intent on her making a good match, you know. That sort of thing is useful when you’re courting.”

Annette made a face. “What a terrible reason to be good at something, Mercie,” she said.

Mercedes was unbothered by Annette’s indignant tone. She shrugged again. “It’s something a lot of us have to think about. You, too, I imagine.”

Annette sighed. Mercie wasn’t wrong. “Still,” she said, “I’m glad it makes her happy.”

Mercedes nodded serenely as she looked back at Annette. “It’s good to find things that bring you joy, even if you found them for cynical reasons at fir – oh no.”

“What?” Annette asked. She started to turn around to follow Mercedes’s gaze, but her friend grabbed her arm before she could move.

  
“Don’t turn around,” she whispered. “But does it look like Ferdinand is coming back towards us?”

“How am I supposed to tell if I can’t turn around?” Annette hissed back.

“Oh saints, he is,” Mercie said, panic rising in her voice. “I’m going to go hide outside until he loses interest; if he asks about me, tell him I’ve died or something.”

Mercedes was gone before Annette could ask her for a better lie.

“Good evening, Annette! You’re looking lovely this evening,” Ferdinand said, his charming voice coming from above her. Annette supposed she didn’t have any reason to be surprised; she’d been given a fair warning. She turned to him and tried to smile, reminding herself that Mercie would be kind if she was here, so the least Annette could do was be amicable.

“Hello, Ferdinand,” she said. “Enjoying the ball?”

“Yes, it’s a smaller gathering than I’m used to, but sometimes these intimate affairs can be just as delightful, don’t you think?” he asked. “Did I see Mercedes sitting with you earlier? I was hoping to speak to her, we were having a fascinating conversation about Crests but the dance ended and she got lost in the crowd somehow.”

“Oh, um,” Annette stumbled. She was not great at lying. “She, um, died? She’s dying to finish that conversation, I mean. I don’t know where she went. She’s probably somewhere in the ballroom, though. Definitely inside.”

“Oh?” Ferdinand asked, losing interest in Annette’s stumbling and looking over her head to search the ballroom. “I didn’t think the Great Hall would be large enough to get so lost in, but here we are! It’s amazing what a bit of candlelight can do, isn’t it?”

“Yes?” Annette ventured. She had felt overwhelmed by the extravagance of the evening from the moment she stepped into the Great Hall, clutching Mercie with one hand and Hilda with the other. The tables had been pushed back to create space for an enormous central area for dancing, the food was every bit as enticing as Ingrid had promised, and the decorations were as beautiful as Annette had ever seen. Banners representing each house hung on the walls, and Ferdinand was right that the floating candles and rarely-used chandeliers eerily changed the space, the light flickering off the dancing couples and casting uneven shadows on the walls.

“It’s cute how hard they tried to put on a showing for the students, isn’t it?” Ferdinand continued. “Those banners are a bit much, though, I feel like I’m at a child’s birthday party.”

“Oh,” Annette said. Feeling that wasn’t quite enough of a reply, she added, “I kind of like them.”

“Do you?” Ferdinand asked. “Well, to each his own, I suppose! By the way, I never congratulated you on winning the Heron Cup, did I? It was a close race, but I’m sure your house is quite proud of you.”

Annette blushed that Ferdinand would bring this up. He had been the participant from the Black Eagle House, so Annette didn’t want to hurt his feelings or turn the conversation into a needless competition. Privately, Annette thought Ferdinand was a divine dancer. She had seen him practicing the week before the competition and had been just as surprised as he had when the judges named her the winner instead. She didn’t want to rehash their decision, however, so she just gave Ferdinand a smile and a polite thank you, which she hoped would end the conversation, or at least steer it away from the contest.

It didn’t. Ferdinand continued on, “I suppose you’re very bored of dancing tonight, with all the experience you have. You must have had a lot of training before you came to Garreg Mach for your professor to choose you as your house’s candidate, no?”

Annette blushed, hoping Ferdinand wouldn’t see in the candlelit room. “No, not really. I didn’t go to many balls before this one,” she said, silently deciding that “not many” and “zero” were basically the same number. “And no one in my family had much interest in sending me to lessons. I just asked the professor if I could enter because I thought it sounded fun.”

Ferdinand raised his eyebrows at this. “Is that so?” he asked, sounding genuinely surprised. “Well, I suppose that explains why your dancing is more emotional than practiced – it makes a certain kind of sense that you don’t have any kind of formal training.”

“I don’t know, I think I did pretty good,” Annette said, crossing her arms and resisting the urge to scan the room to see if Mercie had returned. She could hear the sarcasm creeping into her voice, but luckily Ferdinand didn’t seem to pick up on it.

“Of course, I absolutely agree!” he said with a generous smile. “That sort of thing is very much the trend right now; I'm not surprised the judges went for it. I am surprised to hear you haven’t had many opportunities to dance, however. Surely your uncle – isn’t he the Baron Dominic? I’m sure he would be the type to - -”

“Annie, you look even more gorgeous from across a crowded room, did you know that?” The voice cut Ferdinand mid-sentence. Sylvain seemed utterly unapologetic as Annette and Ferdinand broke their conversation off to turn towards him. He pointed to the seat where Mercedes had been sitting. “Is this seat taken?”

Annette shook her head silently. Sylvain gave a cheerful “Great!” and swung Felix into the chair. Ignoring the bewildered look from Annette (and always ignoring the daggers Felix’s eyes shot at him constantly), Sylvain crossed by Annette and clasped Ferdinand on the shoulder with a huge smile.

“Ferdinand, my good man! Just the fellow I was hoping to see,” he said with an enthusiasm so bright Annette almost believed him. “I’ve been trying to get a girl to have tea with me and I have it on good authority that she’s particularly fond of your collection. Can you tell me where you buy your favorites?”

Ferdinand’s eyes shone at the prospect of such a discussion, but he was nothing if not well-mannered. He looked guiltily at Annette. “Miss Dominic and I were in mid-conversation, I’m afraid – ”

“Oh, she doesn’t mind, do you Annie?” Sylvain asked, turning back to Annette and winking. Stop winking at me, Annette thought inwardly, but outwardly she just gave Ferdinand one final smile and shook her head. “Well that settles that!” Sylvain continued, already beginning to lead Ferdinand away from the group. “Maybe just start with listing all the tea you own and we’ll narrow it down from there.”

Their voices soon disappeared into the general background noise of the crowd. Letting out an audible sigh, Annette turned back to Felix, who, having lost a sight line on Sylvain for glaring purposes, had instead decided to stare at his shoes. He was back to being sharp and immaculate, with his hair firmly secured and not a strand out of place and his school uniform looking as if it had been professionally tailored to fit him. The cuts and scrapes also seemed bandaged up or magicked away, although he still had a black eye, which inevitably drew attention to the left side of his face. That was where Annette was staring when he finally looked up, looking her up and down as he seemed to be thinking of something to say.

“Well,” Annette said before he could talk. “That was . . . not subtle.”

Whatever Felix was going to say died on his tongue. Then, instead, he gave a short, slightly bitter laugh and leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms out against the table behind them.

“What did you expect?” he asked. “Sylvain is an idiot.”

Annette bit back a smirk at this. “That’s not a very nice thing to say about your best friend, Felix,” she scolded, knowing he wouldn’t particularly care.

“If he is my best friend, and the jury’s still out on that, then I would be the best authority to decide if he’s an idiot, right? And he is,” Felix reasoned. Softening slightly, he turned to Annette, finally making eye contact. “In his defense, I think he legitimately thought Mercedes would be here when he first started badgering me. She runs faster than I give her credit for, doesn’t she?”

“Well, okay, now Sylvain’s motivation makes a lot more sense,” Annette said, rolling her eyes. “Why are you here?”

Felix shrugged. “I wasn’t going to bother you and Mercedes; you’ve had so many people pulling you on the dance floor I’m sure you two haven’t had time to, you know, rate the desserts they have tonight or whatever it is you two talk about.”

“Scintillating discussions of art, culture, and society,” Annette corrected him promptly.

“Right, that’s what I said,” Felix replied easily. “You wouldn’t want me joining those; I hate all of those things. But you didn’t look particularly happy once she left, so I figured if I could get Sylvain off my back and His Courtliness off yours, it would kill two birds with one stone.”

“You mean Ferdinand?”

“Yeah, what’s that guy’s deal? Are you guys actually friends or was he just bothering you?”

Annette laughed before she could help herself. She wasn’t surprised that Felix wouldn’t be a fan of polite small talk, but she thought he would at least be aware of the concept. “He’s not so bad,” she said, more kind now that Ferdinand wasn’t actively making her feel uncultured and foolish. “I think his heart is in the right place, at least. He was definitely looking for Mercie, not me, though. Something you two have common.”

Felix frowned. “I don’t think we have much of anything in common."

  
“What do you think of him?” Annette asked curiously.

Felix considered this for a moment. “He’s pretty good with lances; probably a bit better than me. I’m much better at swords, obviously, but he can shoot on horseback, which is impressive.”

“I mean, like, as a person,” Annette clarified.

“Oh.” Felix took less time to consider this. “I don’t like him. He’s annoying."

“You’re terrible, Felix,” Annette laughed. “I feel like you say that about everyone.”

“Not everyone,” Felix offered as a protest. “I wouldn’t say that about, like, Ingrid. I wouldn’t say that about you.”

Annette raised her eyebrows. “Oh? How do you describe me, then?” she asked, only slightly dreading the response.

Felix turned his head to one side and looked at her intently. Finally he said, “Not bad at magic. Good singing voice.”

“Felix!” Annette cried. She realized should have dreaded the response more. “I thought we agreed to never speak of that again!"

“Oh, is that what we agreed to?” Felix asked. Annette couldn’t decide whether she liked the glint in his eye or not, but she did know she didn’t trust it. “I don’t seem to remember that conversation, which is funny because I can remember your song lyrics _so well_ –”

“Villain! Scoundrel! Ne’er-do-well!” Annette punctuated each name with a jab to Felix’s shoulder, which was on the whole even less effective than Ingrid’s jabs at Sylvain while she had been practically upside down. The multisyllabic nature of the final insult threw her off rhythm enough for Felix to catch hold of her wrists and stave her off. He gave her a smug smile as he looked down at her.

“Any other names? Those were some good ones,” he said.

Annette thought for a moment. “I was thinking ‘rapscallion’ next,” she offered.

“That’s not bad. I think I still like villain best, though,” Felix said, dropping her hands and returning to leaning back against the table. “Would it help if I upgraded you to ‘pretty good at magic’?”

“It would not help, but it would remind me that I have all my weapons at my disposal right now and you left all yours at the training ground,” Annette grumbled.

Felix grinned down at her. “I’m at your mercy, then,” he conceded. “Once more, your secret’s safe with me.”

Annette made a face at him, but at least Felix wasn’t prone to winking. She turned her eyes back to the crowded Great Hall. There was still no sign of Mercie, but she caught sight of Bernadetta flailing wildly as Caspar dragged her onto the ballroom floor. She couldn’t make out what he was saying, but it appeared to be as enthusiastic as it was unconvincing to Bernadetta. On the other side of the Hall, she saw Hilda talking intently to Lorenz, twirling a curl around one finger the way she usually did when she was trying to persuade someone to do something for her. Annette wondered if she was trying to convince him to dance with Marianne, who was lingering by one of the giant windows of the Great Hall and looked ready to break some glass if an escape was deemed necessary. If Ferdinand considered this an intimate gathering, Annette shuddered to think what a grand affair would look like. The chaos of the room was almost overwhelming.

It provided a good subject change, away from singing, however. She turned back to Felix. “So, are you enjoying the ball so far?” she asked him.

“No,” said Felix, crossing his arms and slouching in his seat slightly. It was the mildest form of sulking Annette had ever seen, but it had the air of sulking, all the same. “These things are the worst; I’m counting down the hours until I can leave.”

“Why do you hate them so much?” Annette asked. “And don’t tell me it’s because you’re a bad dancer, Ingrid says you’re fine.”

Felix raised his eyebrows. “Why was Ingrid telling you about my dancing merits?”

“Don’t dodge the question!” Annette said, in order to dodge the question.

Felix sighed. “It’s just. . .” He trailed off, looking at the dancing couples around them, the swirling colors and flickering shadows that the room descended into if you didn’t focus your eyes on a particular spot. Annette wondered for a moment if he was just going to let that serve as an answer, but he eventually spoke again. “It’s just, why are we here? Why are we doing this?”

“I mean, tradition? Celebration? Because it’s fun?” Annette listed off, noting that none of them seemed to particularly convince Felix. “We’re allowed to take a break and enjoy ourselves every once in a while, Felix, it’s not going to kill anyone.”

“I just don’t see why people are enjoying this.”

“Some of us like dancing, Felix,” Annette said, biting back her tongue from reminding him that he was talking to the army’s newly appointed dancer so he could maybe lay off the insults to the craft.

“That’s not even what I mean,” Felix said, sitting up suddenly. “It’s just – look, see Flayn over there?”

Annette looked. Flayn was accepting a glass of champagne from Lorenz and positively beaming at him, although Annette rarely saw Flayn do anything but beam at people, so she wasn’t sure why Lorenz was looking so smug about it. Annette nodded at Felix. “Yeah, what’s wrong with her? I doubt her father lets her go out much; it’s no wonder she’s having a great time.”

“Two months ago I was peeling her body off the _floor_ of some dark tunnel, is what’s wrong, Annette. I was pretty sure she was _dead_. You were there, you saw her – I thought you were going to faint and then I’d be stuck lugging two unconscious mages through Garreg Mach’s creepy hidden passages –”

“Shut up, Felix,” Annette said automatically, although she didn’t really want him to stop talking. He course-corrected.

“Did we ever catch who did that to her? Do we even know why they took her? I couldn’t feel her breathing, Annette; why are we putting our resources into having a fucking party?”

“Leave Flayn alone,” Annette said, a touch of anger creeping into her voice. “She deserves more than anyone to feel like a normal person again, you don’t get to belittle her for wanting to forget about that for _one evening_.”

Felix kept going, barely acknowledging Annette’s reply although not outright interrupting her. “Flayn’s just one example, okay? Ashe watched his father die this year. Sylvain actually killed that thing that was his brother. We don’t get answers, nothing gets solved.”

“So what, we’re supposed to just sit in the dark and be afraid?” Annette asked. “Is that what you want, Felix? To just wait for the next battle, month after month after month?”

Felix stared at her, shadows and candlelight playing off his eyes, which seemed darker than she remembered. “I saw Dimitri tear a practice dummy in half with a single spear thrust the day after Remire. I hear him muttering curses to the dead in his sleep every time I walk past his room at night,” he said, his voice so low Annette had to lean in to hear him fully. “And the curses are getting worse, and the dead are piling up. And then we all come in here and he puts his arms around your waist like he couldn’t hurt you and we all just act like it’s normal.”

Annette recoiled back, slightly. “Dimitri would never hurt – Dimitri would never hurt _any _of us, Felix,” she gasped, horrified at whatever he was implying.

Felix’s dark eyes flashed with some emotion she’d never seen from him before. Annette tried to place it, moving between pity and concern and finally landing on fear – was this what Felix looked like when he was afraid? Before she could decide, the look was gone, replaced by the angry glower that she was so used to.

And she wanted to ask him, what have you seen that makes you so afraid?

And she wanted to ask him, who are you afraid for, because you’ve never seemed to value anything enough to be afraid to lose it.

And she wanted to ask him, what do you dream about when you sleep at night? Do you hear the same screams, and see the same flames, as I do?

But when she looked up at him again, trying to find that expression in his eyes again, what she actually asked him was: “Felix, are you crying?”

The back of Felix’s hand immediate went to his eyes, dragging across them before she could figure out if there had actually been tears. “I don’t –” he started. “Shut up. I’m not crying.”

Mirroring his actions, Annette reached her hand towards his face without thinking, then pulled back as he flinched at her movement. “Sorry,” she whispered, as usual not sure why she was apologizing.

Felix looked away, leaning back slightly. “Don't – let’s not – ” he stumbled, trying and failing to pick a sentence that he could finish. “This is ridiculous, why are we even talking about this. Do you want to dance or not?”

Annette blinked. “Sorry?” she said again, this time with rising inflection and at a much louder pitch. She wasn’t sure exactly what had happened in the last 15 seconds, but she was reasonably certain it hadn’t been about dancing.

“I’m wasting your time; I know you have other people – other things to do.”

Annette wasn’t sure what, or who, he was referring to, but didn’t have time or energy to clarify. “You’re totally fine, Felix,” she said, trying to regain some sense of control of the conversation. “Is everything okay? Do you want to talk –”

“No. I don’t. Let’s just get this dance over with.”

Annette bristled, his brusqueness overriding her earlier concern. “‘Get this over with’? That’s how you’re going to ask me?”

Felix shot her a confused look. “Yes? I thought you said, earlier today, I thought you asked me – ”

“Get? This? Over? With?”

Felix could return glares as well as Annette could give them. He let out an exasperated sigh. “Look, I know you don’t think I just happened to choose the one empty seat by you by coincidence. You’re not a fool. Sylvain said I had to ask you to dance –”

“Oh, well, if _Sylvain_ said it, I guess we’d better do it, then,” Annette said, crossing her arms and turning away from Felix. Now who’s sulking, a voice in her head whispered, but she quickly batted it down.

“Why are you acting like this, I thought you wanted me to ask you,” Felix protested from behind her. “Do you _not_ want to dance, then?”

Annette whirled back around, unable to maintain sulking when arguing was an option. “No, I’d rather sit here and let you tell me that you think all my friends are callous murderers,” she snapped.

Felix paused a moment at this. “See, I know you’re being sarcastic, right now,” he said finally, “Which means we’re on the same page, because I would also like to never return to that conversation. So I do think dancing is the best option.”

“I just want to know,” Annette said, the backs of her ears burning now in a mixture of anger and embarrassment. “If Sylvain hadn’t dragged you over here, if you weren’t being _forced_ into the absolute _torture_ of social interaction, would you want to ask me to dance?”

For a moment, Felix bristled, drawing himself up to full height in instinctual response to the anger in Annette’s voice. But the question seemed to catch him off guard, and though he kept his scowl, he finally couldn’t match Annette in the glaring contest she’d initiated. He looked away towards the dancers, his eyes flashing with anger.

“I mean, would you want me to?” he asked darkly.

“Just _answer_ the _question_, Felix,” Annette snapped, pushing aside the vague realization that he might have been more angry at himself than anyone else in the moment.

Felix looked at her finally, but didn’t give a reply. Annette waited for a beat, and another. He opened his mouth as if to give a reply, but all that came out was a rather strangled “I mean . . .” followed by him immediately looking back to the floor.

Annette stood up in what she hoped was a dignified manner. “Fine, Felix. I’m sorry dancing with me would be such an awful experience for you. Good luck with your stupid wager.”

She tried not to stomp as she walked off, but she suspected she was stomping, a little. It was loud enough to drown out whatever pathetic excuse Felix called out after her as she walked away, at least. Or maybe that was just the voice in her head yelling _stupid, stupid, stupid_ at her with every step that she took.

Stupid for laughing at his jokes. Stupid for caring about his fears. Stupid for thinking this was about anything beyond Felix’s outsized sense of pride and competition. Stupid for thinking he was actually enjoying talking to her.

A hand grabbed Annette’s elbow and pulled her back. She let out a small shriek as she fell into a chair.

“You _can’t_ just walk past me and not tell me what was happening in that conversation,” Hilda giggled, letting go of Annette’s elbow and setting to work straightening the strands of hair that had fallen out of place as Annette fell. “You were red as a tomato!”

Annette tried to get her bearings. She’d only stomped a few of tables over before Hilda had intervened (Annette wondered if Hilda had chosen this seat specifically to spy on her), but there was no danger of Felix following her. He had disappeared back into the crowd, not doubt to rejoin Sylvain. An array of punch bowls and goblets sat on the table behind them, and breathless couples cheerfully maneuvered around the two girls to get drinks following a dance that had just ended.

“Hello, Hilda,” Annette said. “I’m not sure there’s much to tell.”

“No kidding? It looked like the conversation was going so well!” Hilda said cheerfully.

Annette blinked. “Really?” she asked skeptically.

“Nope,” replied Hilda, still cheerful. “The boy’s an absolute calamity. You should probably just marry Ashe and save yourself a lot of trouble.”

Annette glanced over at Ashe, who had finally gotten up enough nerve to stand next to Dedue and was enthusiastically pantomiming something that may or may not have been a crash course in basic dance steps. The Duscur student nodded solemnly.

Annette looked back at Hilda. “You know, Hilda,” she said slowly. “I’m starting to think I should not be putting you in charge of my love life.”

“Never mind that,” Hilda said without a hint of being offended. “Claude! Are you done yet?

Claude von Reigan popped up from behind the table they were sitting by, looking twice as dashing and three times as untrustworthy as he generally did. He carefully placed a punch bowl on the table between the three them. The liquid slightly sloshed over the sides as he set it down.

“Evening, Annette, great dress,” he said in one breath. Hilda glared at him; Annette imagined her battle negotiations were not going as planned. He ignored her, “Are you volunteering to be our first victim this evening?”

“Here, try this,” Hilda said before Annette could reply to Claude’s bizarre and frankly terrifying choice of icebreaker. She scooped a nearby goblet into the bowl and handed it half-full to Annette.

Annette peered at the contents suspiciously. It smelled faintly like strawberries and was stickier than anything she wanted to be holding at the moment. “Claude made this?”

“Absolutely,” Claude beamed at her.

“Then I’m good,” said Annette, gingerly placing the goblet on the table.

Claude laughed. “Annette, it’s not anything dangerous. I don’t just go around handing out poison to people; you have to hide it.”

Annette crossed her arms stubbornly. “You’re not making a good case here, Claude,” she said.

Hilda took the goblet off the table and took a sip and smiled. “Annette, don’t worry so much,” she said with a smile. “Claude and I are on a quest, you see.”

“A noble and worthwhile quest,” Claude added.

“A quest to make alcohol taste good,” Hilda finished with a flourish.

“Alcohol already tastes good, Hilda,” Claude corrected her. “We’re trying to make it taste _better_.”

Annette blinked at the goblet as Hilda pressed it back into her hands, satisfied that she had adequately proved it wasn’t poisoned. “You’re trying to get everyone drunk?” she asked, more to have something to say than anything else.

“Only if they want to. Stop making it sound weird,” Hilda giggled at Annette, nudging her elbow slightly to encourage her to take a drink.

“I’m guessing you didn’t clear the plan with anyone?” Annette said. She felt like a dork just asking, so she tried to balance this out by taking a hesitant sip of the drink. It did, admittedly, taste extremely good, but that might have just been her love for sugar talking.

“Annette, don’t insult me,” Claude grinned at her. “You know I'm allergic to authority figures, how would I even ask without breaking out in hives?”

Annette smiled back at him weakly. They’d had fancy wines at some of the grander feasts over the year, and she’d seen champagne glasses floating around tonight, but had known Claude long enough to know that his plans were usually designed to cause the maximum amount of trouble, even if Hilda’s explanations were designed to sound the maximum amount of reasonable.

“What is Seteth going to say if he sees you’re spiking all the punch bowls?” she asked. She took a longer drink to offset the paranoid crack in voice. And also because she really liked strawberries.

“First of all, we’re just starting with one and seeing how we feel,” Hilda corrected her breezily, although Annette felt her point still stood. “Second of all, we’re way ahead of you. We tricked Lorenz into asking Flayn to dance and then told Seteth about it. Lorenz can run pretty fast so we figure we’ve got about thirty minutes before Seteth gets back here. In the meantime, we’ve got this for anyone who wants it.”

“Maybe as much as ninety,” Claude added. “Seteth’s formal robes look hard to run in.”

“Seteth isn’t the only chaperone here tonight, though,” Annette said hesitantly.

“True,” said Claude. “But Manuela won’t mind as long as we share and I told Teach we have this stuff at every ball.”

“You don’t have to finish the glass if you don’t want to, I can finish it off for you” Hilda said, ladling a goblet for herself before Annette could answer. “But it’s good, right? Claude is missed his calling as an inn bartender.”

Claude rolled his eyes. “Hilda would love to have any job but the one she was born into; sometimes she projects this on to others,” he explained to Annette. Then, looking over her shoulder, he yelled, “Oi! Pinelli! Come try this stuff!”

“It’s good,” Annette assured Hilda. Her friend broke into a huge smile. Annette added, “You can finish the rest of mine if you want, though. I’m not sure I’d be able to remember the dance steps other . . . wise?”

She trailed off as she realized Hilda was only partway listening, instead turning her head to stare across the Great Hall. Annette followed her gaze and saw Felix and Sylvain staring back. Or at least, momentarily staring back – Felix tore his gaze away as soon as they made eye contact, and resumed a furious conversation with Sylvain, who also soon looked away, but continued to make exaggerated and obvious gestures towards Annette as they talked.

“I can’t believe _Sylvain _gets to find out what happened in that conversation before I do,” Hilda whined. “I shouldn't have let myself get distracted.”

Annette nodded absently, not really hearing Hilda’s complaining. Not taking her eyes off the conversation (although fortunately Felix didn’t look over again to catch her staring), she took one long, steady sip of the strawberry drink until she’d basically inverted the goblet entirely. She slammed it on the table between her and Hilda.

“I’d like more, please, if that’s alright,” she said, her mouth set in a grim line.

Hilda clapped her hands her hands together and gave a delighted shriek of laughter. “That’s my girl,” she sang brightly, taking the goblet from Annette and refilling it. “I told Claude you should be on the short list for people to tell about this. He thought you’d snitch but I told him he doesn’t know you like I do.”

“Thanks, Hilda,” Annette said vaguely, staring at the drink as Hilda pushed it back into her hands. It suddenly hit her that the room was swaying slightly, and she was glad that she was sitting down. “Maybe I should have some water, instead,” she muttered to herself.

“You’ll be fine; Claude says it’s like 90% fruit juice,” Hilda said, waving away Annette’s concerns. “Now, tell me exactly what happened when you were talking to Felix; I’m dying of curiosity right now.”

Annette hesitated. She liked Hilda a lot, but liking someone was a lot different from telling them things. A larger part of her wanted to go find Mercie and cry into her shoulder first, in order to get some perspective, and to have a good cry, both of which seemed particularly necessary at the moment. But Hilda was here and Annette was angry. So Annette took a large gulp of the drink and launched into an account of the conversation. She left out the parts about people dying, and the parts where Felix’s eyes were scared and vulnerable, as she somehow still felt that was a secret that she didn’t want to let go of. But she also left out the parts where he was funny, and where he made her laugh, and where he looked at her with an amusement in his eyes that made her heart flip, because she was too mad to say anything good about him. As a result, the retelling wasn’t particularly linear and Annette wasn’t sure she’d actually represented anything correctly, but Hilda still gasped indignantly at the appropriate moments, which was probably all that Annette really wanted from the conversation, anyways.

“Get this over with?” Hilda parroted, her eyes wide with horror but with a suspicious amount of glee in her voice. “He actually said that? What an absolute scoundrel!”

Annette gave an unexpected giggle of delight. “That’s exactly what I called him!”

“What, as you were walking away? That’s good, I’ll have to use that.”

“No, it was earlier,” Annette said. Her voice sounded higher pitched that she was used to, even to her own ears. “I think I might have missed some details?”

Hilda waved this concern away. “That’s okay, I got the gist. I’m so glad I found you, you can spend the night right here and you don’t have to talk to him ever again. I wish Marianne were here, she always knows just the right thing to say.

Annette had a hard time believing that, but didn’t say so. “Where is Marianne?” she asked instead.

Hilda sighed. “She’s standing over by the Blue Lions banner. I told her to at least stand by Golden Deer but I think she thinks she blends in more against blue than yellow. I tried to get her to come help me and Claude set this up but she said it was too far away from an exit. Whatever that means.”

“Is she . . . having a good time tonight ?” Annette’s favorite icebreaker sounded ridiculous even to her, but she wasn’t sure what else to ask.

Hilda frowned. “I certainly hope so. She danced with Sylvain, you know, and he’s so charming. And Ignatz asked her, and everyone likes Ignatz, so she probably likes Ignatz too. But after that, she’s just stood by that stupid window and that stupid banner all night. How are people going to ask her to dance if they can’t even see her, you know?”

“I don’t really know that Marianne wants to dance with that many people tonight,” Annette said gently, trying to remain tactful “Maybe two was enough?”

Hilda looked at Annette in shock. Then her shoulders slumped and she sighed again. “It’s not like I don’t know that, Anettte,” she said, sounding more genuinely sad than Annette had ever heard her. “I just wanted her to realize how beautiful she was tonight, you know? Look at her –” Hilda turned her head towards the Blue Lions banner and smiled to herself. “Doesn’t she deserve to be admired by everyone?”

“I mean,” Annette stalled, not sure how to answer the question. She decided on honestly, which wasn’t always the wisest choice but was all she could come up with at the moment. “I think she’d just rather just dance with you, if you asked her. ‘Everyone’ is kind of overrated sometimes.”

Hilda blinked at this. Annette couldn’t remember a time she’d actually offered Hilda advice rather than just following around in the whirlwind she created. They both seemed shocked by the sudden turn of events.

“I’m not . . . I’ve never been good at asking people for things,” Hilda finally said, her voice much smaller than Annette was used to.

Annette shrugged. “Well, just don’t tell her to ‘get this over with’; that’s the only advice I’ve got.”

Hilda gave a joyous, undignified snort of laughter at this. “Annette, please, not while I’m drinking something!” she said, coughing into her goblet. Annette hurriedly grabbed a napkin and shoved it towards Hilda, who buried her whole face in it. When she finally looked up, she was smiling – that small, more sincere smile that Annette only saw when she looked at Marianne. “You’re one of the nicest people I know, Annette, did you know that?” she asked. The smile faded. “You both deserve better,” she said, more to herself than Annette, so that Annette wasn’t sure that was actually what she heard.

“I –” Annette started, but she was cut off by Claude leaning over the table so far that his elbow actually brushed against Annette’s sleeve as he balanced between them.

“Hilda, settle this argument between me and Gautier, would you?” he asked, not bothering to wait for an opening in conversation.

“Claude, hi!” Hilda said, all bright smiles and girlish giggles again. “What’s this you need?”

“Okay, if Gautier and I were to take up axes, who would have the advantage? It’s me, right? Bowmen are great at accuracy, it’s the one thing axes lack, it’s a perfect pairing.”

“If I say it’s you, Claude, will you learn axes?” Hilda said, batting her eyelashes, a thing that Annette did not actually know was possible until this moment. “Because if you did, you could stop sending me out on the _front lines_ every sainted battle we have,” she added, her sweetness turning into a snarl in the final lines.

“Gods above, don’t start that conversation again,” Claude said, annoyed. “You’re at an officer’s academy, Hilda, what did you think you were going to do here?”

“I just want _one weekend _off, Claude,” Hilda said. She had spun around so far in her chair that she found it easier to just climb onto it and lean over the back of it, resting her knees on the seat as she leaned towards Claude, who beat a hasty retreat to his side of the table.

Annette realized with a sinking feeling she wasn’t going to get Hilda back on track to their earlier conversation, and that if she involved herself too much in the current conversation, Hilda might call upon her as some sort of expert witness. She turned away from the arguing Deer to confirm that it was, in fact, Sylvain who Claude was talking about axes with. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from screaming, and grabbed the edge of the table to steady herself, as her sudden turn had made the room spin a little more than she’d anticipated.

Sylvain, for his part, seemed content to pretend that this meeting was delightful for all parties involved. “We meet again, Miss Dominic!” he said a little too enthusiastically, giving her a smile that was at least decently sheepish. He raised the goblet he was holding in his hand by way of greeting. Annette was starting to doubt Claude and Hilda’s shortlist of friends was as exclusive as Hilda made it out to be. “Giving up on dancing for the evening?” Sylvain added. Annette narrowed her eyes at him.

“Depends on who’s asking,” Annette replied. “Giving up on your tea collection so soon?”

Sylvain’s leaned over the table with a conspiratorial grin. Forgetting that she was technically rather annoyed at him as well as Felix, Annette couldn’t help but lean in, especially as Hilda had more or less completely abandoned her to argue with Claude.

“If I’m coherent at breakfast tomorrow, remind me to tell you how much some of those teas cost,” Sylvain said eagerly. “I nearly spit out my drink _several_ times during that conversation. The things I do for my friends.”

“Your selflessness is truly admirable,” Annette said. Sylvain beamed at her, choosing to ignore the sarcasm. “And, evidently temporary?” she added, gesturing at the space behind Sylvain’s shoulder, from which Felix was conspicuously absent.

Sylvain looked over his shoulder, taking a minute to understand her meaning. “Oh, Felix?” he asked. “Looking for him again already? You cool off fast.”

“I’m just asking,” Annette snapped.

Sylvain ignored this, as well. He shrugged. “I was talking to him earlier, but I think Ingrid’s yelling at him right now. It was getting boring – I don’t want to spend tonight doing what I could do on any old Tuesday, you know?”

Annette whipped around to find where Felix and Sylvain had been standing. Sure enough, Sylvain had been replaced by Ingrid, her braids entirely eschew now. Annette couldn’t make out what she was saying but her expression was extremely annoyed, and although Felix was defensively slouched against a wall, he did occasionally seem to flinch at Ingrid’s fury.

“Why’s she so mad at him?” Annette asked, turning back to Sylvain.

Sylvain shrugged, taking another sip of his drink. “I think she was saying something about Felix being ‘emotionally unavailable’ and how his ‘inability to communicate’ was ‘ruining his life’? Like I said, I wasn’t super invested in the narrative. Maybe he forgot to put his swords away after practice; Ingrid hates that.”

“Very funny,” Annette muttered darkly.

Sylvain smiled, and Annette finally caught the bitterness in his flawless, flashy grins. She wondered if it was always there. “Well, you know me,” he said. “Someone’s got to be the life of the party.” He clinked his goblet against Annette’s. “Cheers, Annie. I’m going to go see if Dorothea wants to judge Ferdinand’s opulence with me. Or make out with me. Or both.”

Sylvain set his goblet on the table a fraction too hard, offered some pleasantry to Claude and Hilda (who broke away from their argument long enough to smile effusively and demand he come back for seconds later), and sauntered away.

For the first time since the ball began, no one was actually talking to Annette. And she realized how much she wanted that.

The noise and the crowds were still there, of course. She heard Hilda angrily informing to Claude that she had broken a nail in the last battle and Manuela had refused to treat it, and that Claude didn’t even seem to care. She realized that one of the instrumentalists in the small quartet in the corner of the hall was growing steadily sharper as the evening progressed. She was jostled in her seat as a couple reached around her to grab some drinks off the table. She looked over at Ingrid and blearily realized the girl was frantically gesturing to her, had probably been unconsciously gesturing towards her for the duration of the conversation, so that anyone with even a passing curiosity would know exactly why she was lecturing Felix that evening. It was still chaos.

But still. No one was asking her anything. No one was expecting anything of her. No one was _looking_ at her.

She wanted more of it.

Setting her half-empty goblet down on the table behind her, Annette walked towards the back exit of the Great Hall the led to the courtyard of Garreg Mach. The floor seemed to momentarily spin up towards her as she started walking, but she soon found her footing was steadier if she just concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. She half-expected Hilda to pull her back into conversation, or for Felix (or worse, Ingrid) to come running after her as she left. But no one did, and Annette was easily able to slip into the crowds, and then out of the crowds, and then out of the Great Hall altogether. The voices and music became a muted cacophony in the distance, and the cold winter night swallowed up Annette Fantine Dominic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I was expecting to write more actual dancing in this, but so it goes. Sometimes you write what you write and that’s that. 
> 
> This was supposed to be a 2-parter. Remember those days? Good times. But while I’m not against individual chapters being over 10k words, I do think if you go over 10k words you should at least pretend to have a plot. I make no such claims, so it’s 3 parts now! Final chapter should drop sometime in the first week of the New Year.
> 
> Please make responsible drinking decisions this holiday season and also do not spike things without everyone’s consent. Also it’s okay to not drink at all and just rate desserts instead.
> 
> (Someone please write a fic that’s just Annette and Mercedes rating desserts for 1500 words; I wrote that line as a joke but now I actually want to read it.)
> 
> Okay I’m rambling; happy 2020, everyone! See you next week!


	3. The Tower and the Lake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Annette has several wishes. The goddess probably doesn't listen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello friends, I’m popping up at the beginning of the story to let you know that, through the imaginative power of fiction, I have adjusted the general topography of Garreg Mach to include a lake next to the Goddess Tower. I do this for the extremely important reasons that: A) Lakes are pretty, and B) I wanted one. Please adjust your mental maps accordingly.
> 
> I’ll see you at the bottom of the page!

Annette didn’t want to go back to her room, necessarily. It was still early in the evening, and the prospect of spending the majority of her first ball moping over some spell books was grim. She just needed, she decided as she wobbled her way down the courtyard walkway, to find a nice place to sit and be alone with her thoughts for a while. Once she’d sorted things out – and once her head stopped spinning – she could go back to the ball, find Mercie, and dance with dozens of people who were actually interested in dancing. It was Felix’s loss if he didn’t want to dance, not hers.

Annette knew there were benches a ways down the path if she’d kept walking, but she was starting to feel dizzy, and she was having trouble remembering exactly which path would lead her where. So instead she curled against one of the large stone pillars holding up the awning of the courtyard, closed her eyes, and settled in to be alone with her thoughts.

Mostly she thought about how cold it was outside.

Technically, she remembered that Mercie had told her just that week that it was unseasonably warm this year. Technically, she was also from Northern Faerghus, a region so cold and snowy that she had actually cried the first time she saw a flower last spring, so relieved was she to finally see the ground. (A freak snowstorm had killed the flower 48 hours later.) But Annette wasn’t interested in technicalities at the moment – Hilda’s dress was_ not_ designed for outdoorsmen, and now that she had stopped walking and found a spot to sit (on stone, against stone. why did she choose stone?), the winter air was starting to make her shiver. She tried to remember why she’d left her cloak in the Great Hall, and then remembered she hadn’t even taken it to the Great Hall. Had she left it in her room? Or Hilda’s; had she been wearing it when Hilda dragged her away after class to get ready for the ball?

Annette was just starting to do the mental calculations of how long it would take to get to her room and back, cloak in hand, when she heard a pair of voices walking down the archway towards her. One was the voice of the Archbishop, too soft and level to make out either words or intonation. The other voice, once Annette recognized it, made her tuck her knees to her chest and press her body further against the archway behind her, as if flattening herself against a pillar would serve as an adequate hiding spot if the voices got any closer.

“We’re strongly entertaining the possibility that this was the work of multiple parties. Two, even three different actors.” Her father’s voice was low and grave, but compared to Rhea every word reverberated in her skull. “If we’re not searching for a connecting thread, then our investigations will have to broaden considerably.”

Annette wanted to grab onto something to stop the world from spinning, but she was surrounded by stone, and more stone, so she dug her fingers into her knees instead. Her father hadn’t been at the monastery for the past week at least – she had given up keeping track of his comings and goings, but she had been rather optimistic that he might be around more this month. Foolishly optimistic, as was usually the case. And now, in a cruel twist of irony, he had arrived back on the one night that she really did not want to have a conversation with him, and was walking straight towards her at the one time she really would like to be overlooked.

“I’m glad to hear your report tonight, Gilbert.” Archbishop Rhea was now close enough to hear. “I know you must be tired from your journey. Are we any closer to ascertaining how Tomas was able to infiltrate the monastery so seamlessly?”

Annette’s ears pricked up at this. Tomas? Had her father been on a mission related to Remire Village? Attempting both caution and quiet, Annette peered around the pillar. Rhea was dressed in particularly grand robes for the evening’s festivities; Gilbert appeared to be wearing traveling clothes. Neither seemed to notice her as she slowly stood up, using the pillar for support as her legs wobbled under her. She was pretty sure her left ankle had fallen asleep.

Gilbert shook his head in reply to Rhea’s question. “I’m still waiting from reports about Tomas’s history, and a more detailed account of his time at Garreg Mach. I’m inclined to believe that this monster, Solon, has only been with us a short time, in relation to Tomas’s tenure here. But I’ve found little so far to construct a feasible timeline.”

“And Solon,” Rhea said, the tension rising in her voice. “Is he –”

“It seems likely, yes,” Gilbert said before she finished the sentence. “I’ve got men working on that connection, too, but it seems your fears are correct.” The man paused, then added in a voice that had more genuine empathy than Annette could remember from the past 5 years of her life: “I’m sorry, Rhea.”

“Is he what?"

Gilbert and Rhea turned in shock towards the voice, but Annette found herself equally, if not more, surprised to find she had stepped out from behind the pillar and asked the question.

“Annette?” her father asked in surprise.

A part of her froze under their gazes – Gilbert stern and unyielding, Rhea completely unreadable. Still, running away wasn’t really an option, so she pressed forward, instead.

“You’re talking about Tomas, right? Or whatever he became? Can you tell me who he is? Do you know why he wanted to fight us?” The questions tumbled off of Annette’s lips before she fully realized what she was asking. She approached the pair with the same unconscious confidence, until she was standing close enough that she had to look up to see either of their faces properly – she wasn’t sure she’d ever been close enough to the archbishop to realize how tall she was.

Rhea looked down at her, still obviously caught off guard by her presence. “Annette, shouldn’t you be at the ball right now?” she asked, completely ignoring Annette’s string of questions. “What are you doing out here?”

“Please,” Annette said, an edge of desperation in her voice. “I was at Remire Village. I saw Tomas transform. Please. Who was he? Why did he kill . . . all those people?” Her voice was becoming increasingly faltering as she went on, perhaps because she was starting to realize what a foolish line of questioning this was.

“Miss Dominic, that is hardly your place to ask,” her father cut in. “You shouldn’t be listening in on conversations that don’t concern you, let alone asking follow-up questions.”

Rhea nodded before Annette had a chance to point out that there were very real reasons she could name that this _did _concern her. “Your professor can give you all the information you need to know about upcoming battles, my dear,” she said, her voice oddly soothing considering the tension Annette felt coursing through her body and saw reflected in her father’s stance. “If you trust her, you’ll have nothing to worry about.”

Annette had a thousand contradictions to this point that she could bring up, but she lost the thread of all of them when she looked up at the archbishop. “I just – Tomas. My friends. The fire – the hatred – ” she stuttered, realizing that none of these were actual explanations. “The way he _looked_ at me,” she finally spat out. But, she realized in horror, that wasn’t actually much of an explanation, either. It wasn’t even that much more of a sentence.

“Miss Dominic, this line of questioning is highly improper,” Gilbert said, putting a hand on her shoulder and subtly nudging her away from Rhea. “Go back inside; none of this concerns you.”

Annette’s voice was ragged as she turned her face up to glare at her father. “If you sent me out on the battlefield to die, I would do it without question. I just want to know why,” she pleaded. “I just want to know who that man was, to hate me so. Is a simple answer so much to ask for, Sir Gilbert?” She spat out his assumed name with more venom than she’d intended.

“Miss Dominic,” Gilbert said through gritted teeth. “I would ask you to speak more respectfully while in the presence of the Archbishop.”

Annette had the sudden, horrific realization that she had just yelled at the figurehead and leader of the church of Seiros. Actually, she had been yelling at her father, but she wasn’t sure minor details like that would factor into her inevitable trial and sentencing. She wondered if she would be expelled. Or executed. She wondered, briefly, which was worse. But Rhea put a hand on Gilbert’s arm and gave him a small, benevolent smile.

“It’s fine, Sir Gilbert,” she said. “I understand her frustrations. But I’m afraid, Annette, that I can’t give you the answers to the questions. I need your trust, just as your professor does.”

Rhea gently took Annette’s chin in her hand and tilted it up, smiling down at her softly, the way you might smile at a child. “You sit for your bishop’s examination next week, don’t you, dear?” Rhea asked her, her voice light and lovely as a sunbeam. Annette wanted to sink into it, or maybe hide her face from it. She nodded wordlessly. Rhea smiled again. “Perhaps you should drop by and speak to me if you would like to discuss faith magic. You can tell Seteth I sent you if he tries to chase you away.”

She let go of Annette and gave her a final smile. Annette tried to find her voice but couldn’t, simply nodding again as the woman turned and walked away. Rhea may or may not have bid goodnight to Gilbert; Annette couldn’t quite concentrate enough to hear it. She also couldn’t quite concentrate on her own previous conversation to make sense of it, but her heart was still pounding with the terror that she’d messed up beyond repair, an adrenaline that crashed against unexpected kindness in a way that made it hard to stay standing.

Gilbert looked at her gravely, but if he noticed that she was struggling, he didn’t offer her a hand for support. “The Dominic family has always been known for being outspoken,” he said, his voice betraying no emotion. “I pray that it doesn’t bring you harm someday.”

Annette flushed, feeling a surge of emotion from her past when her father would scold her, that unmistakable guilt from childhood when you know you’ve misbehaved. But her blushing quickly turned to anger – what right did her father have to lecture her? To be embarrassed? He distanced himself from his family, from her, even when no one was around to overhear, unless he was so desperate for the archbishop’s approval that he would continue to wear a mask even as she walked away from them.

“I actually have always been told that I sound like my mother,” Annette said pointedly, drawing herself up to full height to maintain her dignity. “The Dominic name has never done much for me.”

It was a statement meant to elicit pain, not a true one. But if her father felt a sting from her barbs, he didn’t show it. With a final solemn look, he turned and walked away. Regretting her harshness almost instantly, Annette relented, calling “Sir Gilbert” after him. When he didn’t turn, she repeated his name, louder this time. He continued to walk

“Gustave,” she finally said. Her voice echoed off the stone archways that lined the courtyard.

That did it. Her father turned and looked her, a vacant and tired gaze settling over his eyes as it often seemed to when Annette tried to speak with him. Annette stared at him, her courage failing her for a moment.

“Did you want something more, Annette?” he asked, his voice completely blank. He could have been speaking to any student in the school – no, to any random stranger on the street. Her name sounded utterly meaningless when he said it; there was none of the joy or pride that she’d spent years of her life imagining.

And Rhea was gone. She could no longer hear them.

“Father, I –” Annette choked on her own voice. What did she want? She tried again. “I won the Heron Cup this week. The only winner, in the entire academy. I didn’t see you in the audience during the competition. Did you know?”

Gilbert did not reply, but he nodded solemnly.

“Don’t you have anything you want to say about that?” Annette pressed him, feeling simultaneously lightheaded and emboldened from whatever drink Hilda had pressed into her hands. She was starting to seriously doubt it was as watered down as her friend had promised.

Gilbert’s expression did not change. “I’m glad to hear that your talents are serving his majesty and the Kingdom well,” he said simply.

Annette felt like she’d been punched in the stomach. “That’s what you have to say?” she asked, her voice cracking on the upward inflection.

Gilbert frowned, slightly. “I pray that your skills will keep you safe on the battlefield,” he added, as if that helped. With a slight bow, he turned to walk away. A typical, meaningless exit, thought Annette bitterly.

“This is my first ball, you know!” she shouted after him as he walked off, her voice rising louder than she had intended. “Kind of a milestone! Most fathers _care_ about things like that.”

Gilbert glanced over his shoulder. Annette wished with all her heart that she could conflate tiredness with regret, or sadness, or any other proper emotion. But at the end of the day, he only looked tired.

“You’ve earned your milestones, Annette,” he said. “I have not.”

Annette felt her eyes fill with tears, and she hated herself for it. “No one has ever asked what you deserve,” she said, willing her voice to remain steady even as she heard it waver. “You’re the only one who made up these rules. I never wanted them.”

“Go back to your friends, Annette,” her father told her, turning once more to walk away. “It’s too cold out here for you.”

And he was gone.

Annette wasn’t sure how long she stood there in the darkness after he left, her hands balled into fists at her sides as she listened to the sound of her own breathing. She also wasn’t sure why she decided to start walking, or how she picked a direction. She definitely wasn’t sure how she ended up at the base of the Goddess Tower, staring up at the stone towards the windows that towered above her, a soft glow illuminating from the tower. Maybe the goddess had guided her footsteps there, calling to her. Maybe she had always unconsciously wanted to come here tonight; to find a wish, or to find a person to make it with. Maybe she was just cold, and walking was better than standing still.

It didn’t really matter.

Annette paused at the door of the tower. She didn’t, strictly speaking, have a reason to go up to the top. She had no one to meet, and didn’t particularly believe in the legend, to begin with. But she couldn’t help but feeling that if she could just get to the top of the stairs, she might find something worthwhile, something to make this evening worth it, to make sense of her spinning head and fractured conversations and litany of disappointments and unanswered questions. Maybe if she just screamed wordlessly at the top of the tower, the goddess could take that emotion and turn it into a useful wish. Or maybe someone else would be there who could do the same. It seemed worth a try. And she was already here.

As Annette turned the doorknob to the outer door of the tower, she heard footsteps in the grass behind her. She let go of the door as if it had given her an electric shock and spun around, wondering if she could feasibly claim she had gotten lost on her way to her dorm room. She spotted a lone, shadowy figure coming from the direction of the Great Hall. Annette squinted her eyes to try to get a better look at who it was.

Dimitri Blaiddyd, crown prince of Faerghus, stepped into the faint ring of light surrounding the tower. He stared at her in surprise.

“Annette?” he asked. “I’m so sorry, were you meeting someone here? I can, um, I can leave.”

Annette responded before he could finish, “No! I mean, yes. I’m not sure. I’m not looking for anyone specifically, I’m just kind of . . .here.” The prince’s awkwardness made her feel especially flustered, as if she’d been caught doing something scandalous, even though logically she knew she hadn’t. She tried to give Dimitri a cheerful smile, although it felt a little too wide on her face. “Please don’t go,” she said. “I don’t want to chase you off, if you were meeting someone.”

Dimitri blushed, flinching slightly when she said this. “Not exactly. I saw someone leaving the ball early and I was wondering if they might be here, but I’m not – it wasn’t planned. I was just, I guess, hoping. . .” he trailed off and looked up at the windows instead of Annette.

“Yes, this is where people do seem to want to end up, isn’t it?” Annette asked, trying to ease the awkwardness of the situation. She wondered who else had ditched the ball. At the moment it seemed there were more students wandering the grounds than staying on the dance floor. Unless Dimitri was referring to her, but the wretched, nervous way he refused to make eye contact with her seemed less like infatuation and more like sheer awkwardness, to her.

When Dimitri gave no response, Annette tried her best to keep the conversation going. “It’s a nice tradition, isn’t it?” she asked, hearing Mercie’s voice echoing in her ear as she said it. “To be able to talk to the goddess?”

Dimitri finally looked at her. His eyes were sadder than such a frivolous question called for. “I suppose,” he said slowly. “I’m not sure she listens.”

Annette stared up into Dimitri’s eyes, trying to figure out what he could mean by such a response. Something in his eyes, in her memory, in Felix’s furious concern the hour before, made her stray from her usual safe list of appropriate questions for awkward small talk.

“Dimitri,” she started, reaching out and touching his elbow, slightly. “Is there anything I can, um. Is there anything I can do to help you?”

Dimitri looked at her in surprise; she felt his arm tense up beneath her. “I’m sorry?” he asked. “Are you – do you want to go up to the tower together? Is that what you’re asking? I’m sorry, Annette, I didn’t mean to give the impression –”

“No, it’s not that,” Annette cut him off, her face growing hot. “I just. I worry about you sometimes. You seem –” She cut off. What did Dimitri seem? Tired? Distant? Felix would say dangerous, but Annette had never felt that. She frowned, and tried again. “You seem like you could use my help, is all. Or somebody’s help. That’s what a house is for, right?”

She thought she could trace a slight look of relief on Dimitri’s face. She tried not to be offended – it’s not like she wanted to make a wish with him, either. “You’re very kind, Annette,” he said finally. “But it’s my job to look after my subjects, not the other way around.”

“I’m not asking as your subject,” Annette replied. “I – perhaps I shouldn’t say this, but I never really came here because I felt I had a duty to the kingdom. I’m sorry if sounds bad. I’m asking as your friend, Dimitri.”

Dimitri took a moment to react to this, then gave her a beautiful, princely smile, one that she was sure would charm diplomats and court ladies alike. “I’m glad to know I have friends, Annette,” he told her, lightly grasping her hand on his elbow with his other hand. “That is enough, I promise you.”

Annette frowned. The moment felt empty; his smile felt empty. Whatever sincerity she had tried to give to her future king, he was unable, or unwilling, to return it. On the other hand, he at least hadn’t accused her of treason or disloyalty, given that she had just blurted out that she didn’t have of a ton of investment in her duty to the kingdom. She wondered how many major authority figures she could get away with insulting this evening. Maybe it was for the best that Dimitri now barred her way from having a tipsy conversation with the goddess – she’d probably find a new form of blasphemy by accident.

Dimitri let go of her hand and pulled back his arm, knocking her out of her reverie on her own litany of mistakes that evening. He smiled at her. “Well, if you’re not heading up to the tower, can I escort you to your next destination? It’s rather cold out this evening.”

Annette smiled back at him. They were back at small talk; she was better at that. “You’re kind to offer, but I think I’ll just head back to the Great Hall. Mercie’s probably looking for me.” She looked to the door beside them. “You should go up; whoever you’re looking for might be there. I never got to the top.”

Dimitri looked uncertain at this, so Annette gave him a wide, encouraging smile and gently pushed him towards the door. He stood with his hand on the doorknob, as she had before. She understood that sense of indecision.

“Good luck,” she whispered. Dimitri nodded, perhaps more to himself than Annette, and slipped through the door. She heard it close behind him, and for a few moments, could hear his footsteps heavy on the stairs as he walked away from her, vertically.

Annette leaned against the wall of the tower and buried her face against one hand. She had no intention of returning to the ball. She was still chasing that moment of silence she had set out for in the first place. But the Goddess Tower was evidently popular real estate this evening, and she had no intention of going up to make a wish now. She considered her options. Her room was still a possibility, if a glum one. She _could_ find a nice corner in the ball and hope no one saw her. Marianne might have some tips on that, and probably wouldn’t ask follow up questions. Annette wondered if the graveyard was actually a good option, then quickly dismissed it, on account of ghosts.

Annette’s eyes slide over to the side of the tower. Around the back, a few hundred yards away, the Goddess Tower overlooked a lake that she had always been fond of. It was probably out of the way enough that no one would find her there. And lakes were very calming. And once she’d calmed down, it would be quick work to return to the Great Hall and pretend she had been looking for Mercie the entire time.

Annette gingerly made her way towards the water. The grass tickled against her ankles as it became wild and more untamed as she walked away from the path. She was surprised it hadn’t died in the cold winter months, but perhaps that lack of snow kept it alive. She could see the lights of the Great Hall and faintly hear the music, even from this distance. She turned her back on both. Settling down on the bank of the small, serene lake, Annette closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

She really wished she had her cloak.

She wished a lot of things, but this particular wish was simple and easy to focus on. Most importantly, it was easy to solve. If she could figure out where she left it, she could plan the best course to retrieve it. She tried to visualize Hilda’s room – had her cloak been hanging on the wall when they left to go find Mercie? She was distracted by the piles and piles of clothing that Hilda had left on the floor – even in her imagination, Hilda’s resolute clutter was distracting. Annette shivered as a gust of wind picked up around her. That was also distracting. She tried picturing her room, instead, if she’d left it on the bed before class that morning. She could clearly see her room; her neatly lined up shoes and carefully folded clothes, the stack of books piled on her desk. Where had she left off in her studying? It was about healing from a distance, she was pretty sure. She had always been pretty bad at that. She wondered how much distance healing would be on her certification exam next week. She wondered if enough theoretical jargon could make up for an appalling practical application. She wondered –

The first realization Annette had that someone was standing behind her was when a heavy piece of cloth dropped over her shoulders.

“Let me know if you want me to go away,” Felix said impassively from above her.

Annette craned her neck to look up at him. He stared down at her with concern in his eyes, underdressed for the winter night. She realized that was at least in part because he’d taken off his cloak and dropped it on top of her. She adjusted it around her and sunk into its warmth like a blanket on a cold winter’s morning when you didn’t have to get out of bed for another hour. Cloaks from northern Faerhgus were the real deal.

“You don’t have to always sneak up on people like that, you know,” she said to him, deciding to forgo any weird compliments on how warm his clothing was. “I thought for a second I was being kidnapped or something.”

“I mean, so did I,” said Felix, his typical frown deepening for a moment. “I know tonight we’re supposed to be forgetting our problems and everything, but is this really a good time for you to be wandering around on your own?”

Annette broke eye contact, staring back into the water ahead of her. The moon’s reflection wavered before her eyes. How many weeks had it been since Flayn had disappeared? Flayn was fine now. They were safe at Garreg Mach.

“It was too loud in there. Too hot,” Annette said, more to the water than to Felix. “I just needed some air.”

“Yeah, I get that,” Felix replied, his voice so low Annette wondered if she’d imagined it.

They stayed staring into the water for a breath. Annette could almost swear she could make out Felix’s reflection in the water next to the moon’s, his straight-backed silhouette disappearing whenever she fixed her eyes on it.

Finally, she turned back to face him, still standing behind her. She asked him, “Is the game plan to just lurk behind me until I go inside, or what?”

Felix blushed. She was starting to realize he blushed a lot. “I mean, I said I would go if you wanted.”

“I didn’t say that,” Annette said softly.

“I would get it if you did,” he muttered. “If you don’t want to talk to me right now, that’s fine. Keep the cloak, though. It’s cold out here.”

“Sit down, Felix, please,” Annette interrupted before he could talk himself back into the Great Hall. “I’m too tired to be mad at you right now; I’d rather be friends.”

It took Felix a moment to process this, but after that moment, he cautiously closed the distance between them. He carefully took a seat next to her by the lake, sitting cross-legged but looking as if he would be able to bolt onto his feet at any provocation. Such nervous agitation, Annette guessed, kept him alive on the battlefield. Or maybe he was just looking for a way out of this.

But that didn’t make any sense. _He_ was the one who came to find _her_.

“Have you been out here long?” asked Felix after a beat.

“Not really,” Annette replied, looking back out on the water. “Have you been looking for me for long?”

“Not really.”

Annette congratulated herself on another sparkling conversation as they settled back into silence. At least the cloak was warm. From somewhere in the trees above them, she heard a bird calling. She wondered what birds were awake at this hour. She settled on a nightingale but vowed to ask Ashe at a later date.

A wicked part of her wanted to wait it out and see how long it would take before Felix felt awkward enough to say something. But she also wondered if he preferred that, just sitting in silence like this, making up facts about birds. Except, of course, only she was making up facts about birds, as far as she knew. What Felix was getting out of this situation was anyone’s guess.

At any rate, Annette preferred talking to trying to figure it out.

“So, who’d you end up dancing with?” she asked, landing on the first question that popped into her brain and immediately wishing she could switch over to the inane nightingale question.

Felix looked over at her blankly. “Sorry?” he asked.

Annette had thought her question had been pretty clear. “At the ball? Dancing? With a girl? The wager?”

The last prompt did it. Realization dawned in Felix’s eyes. “Oh,” he said. Then added, more to himself than to Annette, “Fuck.”

Annette narrowed her eyes at him. “You _did_ dance with someone, right?”

Felix was almost quick enough to turn his wince into a scowl before she saw it. “I kind of forgot about it,” he confessed. “Fuck. Sylvain’s never going to let me live this down.”

“How did you just ‘kind of’ forget, Felix?” Annette said, not sure whether to be horrified or to burst into laughter. “Isn’t that the entire point of you even being here tonight?”

“I mean, you were gone, I don’t know.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Annette tried to keep the squeak out of her voice, with mixed results.

“Let me start over,” Felix said hastily, his own voice cracking slightly. “I talked to you, right? You left. Ingrid came over and yelled at me for I don’t know how long. I looked over and you were leaving the hall altogether. Hilda comes over and starts yelling at me with Ingrid, and also trying to get me to drink some godawful concoction she and Claude have made. I find out they’ve given you like half a dozen goblets of the stuff and left you to drunkenly wander the grounds by yourself after dark – ”

“Okay, I had _maybe_ 2 glasses and it was basically 90% fruit juice,” Annette cut him off.

Felix continued, “The point is, I kind of lost track of things. Settling wagers wasn’t really on my mind. Ingrid eventually stops yelling at me, I eventually stop yelling at Claude. I wander out here, I run into the professor going up to the Goddess Tower, she tells me she saw you down by the lake. Here I am.” He paused, then added, “Incidentally, I feel like it should be the professor keeping track of students, not me. Is it just me or is she a _terrible_ chaperone?”

Annette barely caught the tail end of this monologue, and certainly didn’t offer any evaluations of their professor’s efficacy. Instead, Felix’s mention of Byleth caused her to scramble to her feet and take a few step towards the Goddess Tower, craning her neck to try to see up into the lighted window.

“You said you ran into the professor going into the tower?” she asked excitedly. She was standing at the wrong angle to see much of anything. She took a few steps backwards to see if that would help.

“Yeah, I guess?” Felix said hesitantly. “I’m not sure what that has to do with anyth – watch yourself!”

His warning came too late. Annette’s steps backwards did not actually improve her chances of looking into the Goddess Tower window, but they did lead her dangerously close to the edge of the lake. Annette felt her back heel slip on the muddy edge of the bank as she wobbled backwards. Felix lunged forward, grabbing the edges of the Annette’s (well, technically Felix’s) cloak and pulling it towards him. Safe from the lake but knocked off balance, Annette plunged forward instead, landing mostly upright with her hands on Felix’s shoulders, staring down at him as he held on to her waist. Weirdly enough, this close to Felix, all Annette could properly focus on is what would be the proper magical incantation to fix his black eye.

She might actually pass her Bishop’s exam after all.

Felix raised an eyebrow at her. “Just two drinks and they were mostly fruit juice, Annette?”

Annette forced her world back into focus. “Evil, Felix,” she shot back at him. “You’ve caught me enough times to know I’m just like this.”

“That actually checks out,” Felix admitted. Annette could practically see him tallying the number of times he’d had to snag an elbow or support a shoulder to keep her from falling down a flight of stairs or tumbling off a library stepladder.

Cutting him off before the tally got embarrassingly high, Annette brushed a finger just below his eye, where the skin was starting to turn a painful shade of purple. “Does it hurt much?” she asked, ignoring the way his hands shifted under her to keep her steady as she adjusted her weight onto the hand that remained on his shoulder.

Felix flinched slightly. “Don’t worry about it,” he mumbled, leaning away from her. He pulled Annette to the side as he sat back into the grass again, adding, “And maybe don’t go near the water.”

Annette collapsed back into the grass next to him with a rather undignified _thwunk_. She’d made a proper fool of herself and hadn’t managed to see a thing through the Goddess Tower window, but at least Hilda’s dress wasn’t water-damaged beyond repair. One out of three wasn’t too bad, given how the rest of the night was going.

Felix looked up at the tower window, although he also was in no position to actually see anything. “What were you even trying to do?” he asked skeptically.

Annette blushed. It was bad enough that Felix knew she was a klutz; now she had to go and admit that she was also nosy. “I just wanted to see if I could see who she was up there with,” she admitted, trying not to sound too sheepish and as if this was an incredibly normal thing to do.

Felix frowned, leaning back slightly to get a better view, which Annette knew from recent experience would not help in the slightest. “Why would you think anyone else was up there?” he asked. “She was alone when I saw her.”

“I mean, that’s why people go up to the Tower, right?” Annette said. “I ran into Dimitri heading that way earlier tonight.”

Felix’s frown deepened. “The boar, really?”

“Don’t call him that.”

Felix was unmoved by Annette’s scolding. “I wouldn’t have expected that from him, is all,” he said by way of explanation. “He’s not really one for, I don’t know. Meaningful human connection.”

Annette shifted uncomfortably. She wasn’t sure what was lurking in Felix’s and Dimitri’s joint past, but it was weird to hear Felix arrive at practically the same conclusion about the prince that she generally did. She really liked Dimitri; Felix seemed to absolutely hate him. But they both agreed that he was ultimately unreadable, that he was somehow unknowable.

“The same could be said about the professor, I guess,” Felix continued, almost as if he could hear what she was thinking. “I wouldn’t have expected her to be interested in romantic legends about goddesses and wishes and your true love or whatever.”

“So you can see why I’m so curious!” Annette exclaimed.

Felix gave a shrug. He was maddeningly calm about the whole thing. “I mean, it’s not worth falling in a lake over,” he said.

Annette made a face. “Keep bringing that up and I’ll push you in, see how you like it.

“So much for gratitude,” Felix said with a look that was annoyingly close to a smirk. “Next time I’ll just let you fall in.”

“No, you won’t,” Annette replied. It wasn’t much of a comeback, but as she said it she was surprised by how certain she was that it was true.

Felix also seemed surprised by the certainty in her voice. He looked down at her intently, his hand moving slightly closer to hers as they rested against the grass. “No,” he admitted. “I won’t.”

Annette was the first to break eye contact, looking out onto the water to avoid having to figure out what Felix’s expression conveyed. But when she looked back at him again, shyly, he had also looked away. He stared up at the Goddess Tower again, although she knew he couldn’t see anything worthwhile through the high window above them.

“Do you think the legends are true?” Annette asked him. “About the Goddess Tower, I mean. Do you think anyone’s ever had their wish come true?”

Felix didn’t turn to look at her. “Probably not,” he said.

“Aww, come on,” Annette said. “Not even one couple?”

“Nope.” He finally turned back to her. “Not one.”

“That doesn’t make any sense, Felix. Why would a rumor hang around this long if it literally never happened?”

“Because people are idiots who want something to believe in,” Felix said, rolling his eyes slightly. “It doesn’t get more complicated than that.”

Annette snorted. Typical Felix. She looked him straight in the eye. “You are, without a doubt, the least romantic person I have ever met in my entire life.”

Felix shrugged, looking out over the water. “I’m sorry to hear that.” There was a pause, then he glanced back at her. “I'm really sorry to hear that.”

Annette froze, feeling like a deer caught in the sights of a hunter, or one of those slow-flying grouse that Bernadetta was so good at shooting. She and Felix traded barbs like this all the time. She called him a villain, he called her strange, they realized they were late for class and left it at that. But tonight, it felt different. Maybe it was the drinks, or the moon, or the history of the occasion. Maybe Hilda had just gotten into her head. But the sarcastic glint seemed to have disappeared from Felix’s eyes. For a moment she wondered if he had actually meant it.

It wasn’t _not_ nice.

“So what would you wish for?”

“Huh?” Annette blinked, waking back up into reality.

“If you were up there. With some guy. Instead of stuck down here with me.”

“I never said I was _stuck -”_

“What would you ask for?”

Annette considered this question for a moment. She supposed if she was actually up in the Tower, she would feel like she had to make her wish worthwhile, to make it count. World peace or eternal happiness or something like that. But she wasn’t at the top of a tower, she was down here, sitting in the grass. And unless she had a habit of eavesdropping, the goddess probably wasn’t listening to her.

But Felix was.

Annette pulled his cloak around her, staring into the moon’s reflection in the river beside them. “I think,” she said slowly, trying out the wish as she spoke it out loud. “I would wish that I could stay here a little longer. A lot longer. Like maybe forever.”

Felix wrinkled his nose. “What? Here like, Garreg Mach here? You don’t want to graduate?”

“No, not like _here_. Like . . . here.”

“You sure you only had 2 glasses of that stuff?”

“Felix!”

Felix reflexively flinched, ready to dodge – he’d been friends with Ingrid since birth, after all. But Annette had left all the projectile-shaped bread rolls in the dining hall and was too comfortable wrapped in his oversized cloak to bother with elbowing him. She stuck her tongue out at him instead.

“Look Annie” – she tried to remember if she’d heard him use her nickname before – “You’re going to have to explain that one to me.”

Annette looked at the ground, shifting her weight to her other leg, noticing the criss-cross grass pattern that had embedded into her leg. She hoped she hadn’t left any grass stains on the dress; Hilda had been so nice. She took a breath.

“I mean, like, here, in this moment, in this night.” She began, still staring at the ground. “I mean where we’re all together and we’re all safe and warm and there’s music and food and everything just kind of, you know, fits.”

She felt Felix shift closer to her as she said “safe and warm.” It was a weird thing to say, considering how chilly the night air was. She wondered if he wanted his cloak back. He didn’t ask for it.

“I knew you liked dancing, but forever?” Felix asked. “A ball that lasts forever? You’re describing my literal worst nightmare, Annette.”

“It’s not even the ball, Felix. It’s not the dancing, or the dresses, or anything like that. It’s . . . well . . . ” Annette willed herself to stop looking at the ground, to meet Felix’s eye. She had expected more mockery, but he was leaning towards her with a look of genuine interest. She didn’t not like it.

“It’s what?” he prompted.

“I can’t get last month’s mission out of my head,” Annette whispered, shivering despite the cloak.

Felix move his arm towards her for a moment, then seemed to think better of it, brought it back to run his hand through his hair instead. “Remire Village?”

“The fires. And the screaming.” Annette tried to put the sick feeling in her stomach into words but could only land on phrases. “And the magic – Felix, whatever it was, it was awful magic. The kind you shouldn’t even know exists, let alone be able to use. And Tomas – the way he looked at me, when he looked at me. As if he hated me.”

“It wasn’t Tomas, Annette,” Felix said. “You don’t have to feel like - -”

“But how else can I feel,” she cut him off, shaking her head. “Whoever he was, whoever he actually was, I knew him as Tomas. For the first few months here, I felt like he was one of my only friends. I trusted him, and he hated me. He hated all of us. He hated those people in Remire that he didn’t even _know_, and some of them were so young, or so old, and we couldn’t save them all, we were too late, and - -”

Felix grabbed her arm, pulling her towards him. Annette let out a startled squeak and put her hands to her face. She felt him drop her arm in surprise, startled by her cry. She’d lost track of the world again, lost in her own monologue. She couldn’t even remember the original question that had started her down this track. She wondered at what point Felix wished he could sneak away and join his friends at the ball. She peered at him over her fingers.

Felix had crossed his arms and looked away, the classic, closed off stance he took when talking to people. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I was trying to be comforting. It . . . didn’t work.”

“No, it’s not that,” Annette stammered. “You’re sweet. I just wasn’t expecting it.”

She moved an inch or two closer to him, shifting her weight again so the she was leaning against him. Felix flinched in surprise, but uncrossed his arms, putting one around her. They sat in silence for a moment, each refusing to make eye contact. Annette was grateful the moon was so bright that night – it gave her something to look at where she tried to remember where she was, and then tried to convince herself she was actually there.

“So wait,” Felix finally said, still not looking at her. “Remire Village. Awful. I get it. But how’s that connect to tonight lasting forever?”

The question hung in the air for a heartbeat. Five heartbeats, actually. Annette was close enough to Felix to count them now.

“Because I’m selfish,” she finally said.

  
Felix finally looked down at her, with a mixture of bewilderment and awe. “One day,” he said, “I can only dream, but one day, the conclusions you draw about _anything_ will make sense to me.”

Annette tried to smile, but she couldn’t manage it. “It was awful. You know it was awful. And I think it’s going to get worse. Dark Magic, kidnapped students, sinister knights stalking the campus . . . somewhere along this year, something went seriously wrong. And we don’t know what it is, but it’s going to get worse. You think that too, right?” Annette twisted to look up at him. Felix’s face was grim; she could feel his arm around her tighten.

“I do,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “It’s not just this year. The rot goes back almost as far as I can remember. But you’re right. Something bad is coming. Something we can’t ignore anymore.”

Annette nodded. “If I’m honest, Felix, I’m scared. I’m scared and I’m weak and I’m selfish and tomorrow I’m going to have to get up and go to class like I’m not. But tonight,” she paused, marveling that she had somehow gotten back to the original thread. “Tonight it’s like we’re away from all that. We’re safe. We’re all together. I mean, I’ve messed up a lot tonight, but everyone else seems happy, that counts for something. I just . . . I just wish we could stay here, a little longer. A lot longer. I wish we didn’t have to face what’s coming.”

Felix didn’t answer right away. Annette glanced up at him, and he was scowling as he stared into the middle distance, his thoughts once again unreadable. If her confession had made her out to be weak and worthless (qualities she was sure Felix despised), he certainly didn’t show it. He still held onto her, gently, his thumb tracing against the top of her shoulder and to the edge of her neck. It didn’t _seem_ like he wanted to leave.

When he finally spoke, his voice was low and intense. Annette leaned into it instinctively. “Do you know why Sylvain won the sparring match with me today?” he asked.

Annette raised her head from his shoulder, confused. She knew Felix was obsessed with sparring, but this seemed a stretch of a segue, even for him. “We’re talking about Sylvain now?” she asked.

Felix ignored the confusion in her voice and continued on. “He always loses, I always win,” he said, his voice still too intense to be talking about an afternoon sparring session. “He doesn’t concentrate, he’s too busy flirting and joking around, it’s easy to find an opening. It’s stupidly easy.”

Annette ventured, “Good . . . for you?” It clearly wasn’t the answer Felix was looking for, but he continued on anyways.

“Sylvain didn’t win from a fluke or a lucky shot,” he said, his jaw clenching, as if he was admitting something deeply unpleasant. “He won because he took it seriously. He won because he’s been _practicing_. I’ve never seen anything like it, Sylvain actually trying at something.”

“He really wanted you to dance with someone that badly?” Annette asked, still not quite sure where this was going.

Felix winced and shook his head. “The wager was just bravado, something he could latch onto to talk about. He never stops talking,” he muttered, not necessarily with malice. “No, he’s been like this since last month. Actually showing up for training; blocking out the world during fights. It didn’t click for me until he swung at me today – but he’s scared. He’s finally taking it seriously, but when he got the first hit in, he didn’t look triumphant. He just looked desperate.”

“He looked pretty triumphant when I saw him,” Annette said darkly.

Felix sighed. “Of course he did. Sylvain always knows how to put on a show.”

Annette was starting to piece the conversation together. She sunk back against his shoulder and asked, “So you think this has something to do with Remire?”

“I know it does,” Felix said grimly. “I wasn’t near him in the fight, but he and Ingrid were on the front lines for that battle – cavalry moves fastest; they saw it all first. Sylvain missed something, didn’t get to someone in time – I don’t know who it was, but it got to him. I heard him and Ingrid shouting outside my room that night; they were arguing about it.”

Annette shivered. “Ingrid blamed him for not saving them in time?” she asked.

“No,” Felix sighed. “He blamed himself. He couldn't snap out of it; she couldn’t talk him down.”

“Have you . . . talked to them about it?” Annette asked.

Felix shook his head. “I’d make it worse,” he whispered. “I always do.”

“Not always,” Annette said softly. Felix blushed at this.

“This point is,” he kept talking as if he hasn’t heard her, “we’re all scared, and weak, and messing up, and worrying that messing up is going to hurt people. I don’t think you’re selfish for wishing we could be safe. I think you’re just normal. You just care, and it’s killing you like it’s killing all of us. You’re the most selfless person I know, and you might be the bravest.”

Annette covered her face at this, shrinking away from the compliment. “It’s all an act,” she mumbled miserably between her fingers.

She felt Felix’s hand tug at the edge of her wrist, too gentle to actually move her fingers. She slowly moved her hands down and looked up at him; his face was closer than she remembered before she hid.

“That’s all bravery is,” he said. There was bitterness hiding in his voice, but also something soft and sincere that Annette couldn’t quite place.

Annette’s breath caught as he looked at her. He was so close, and suddenly so soft, and his hand was still on her wrist and his other fingers were lightly pressing against her neck, pulling her towards him ever so slightly.

And that’s when a chorus of delighted screams from the Great Hall caused them both to jump back. Annette quickly swiveled in the grass towards the sound.

Hilda and Claude were dashing across the grass in front of the Great Hall, with Hilda giving a delighted scream and grabbing on to Claude every time she almost tripped on her own feet and Claude shaking her off to maximize his own top running speed. Hilda grasped the now-empty punch bowl, Claude struggling to hold onto no less than half a dozen half-empty bottles that Annette had no intention of trying to identify. They had a decent head start on Seteth, who was a remarkably fast runner when he needed to be, but who was getting tripped up by the long dress robe he had chosen to wear that evening.

“von Riegan, this _not_ appropriate behavior for the future leader of the Alliance,” Seteth was shouting as he ran. Annette was impressed he was able to deliver his typical lecture while in mid-sprint. “Stop this ridiculous farce at once; it does you no good to run; I know where you live - - -”

Seteth’s voice faded away faster than Hilda’s wild screams, which could still be heard long after Annette lost sight of her and Claude. The Great Hall had burst into sounds of laughter and eager chatter, drowning out the industrious musicians who had bravely kept playing despite the commotion.

“Well,” said Felix after even Hilda’s laughs had become too distant to hear. “There you go.”

They looked at each other for a beat before both bursting into laughter. Annette buried her face in her hands again to try to stop the fresh waves of giggles that crept up on her every time she thought she’d caught her breath.

“I’ve just . . . oh goddess. . . I’ve never seen. . . Seteth run like that,” she explained between fits of laughter. Felix gingerly patted her back, looking slightly concerned that she might stop breathing altogether. Annette slowly managed to regain the ability to take breaths that didn’t turn into peals of laughter, but her eyes still sparkled when she finally took her face out of her hands and looked back at Felix again.

“Well, I’m glad everyone over there seems to be having a good time,” he said, though his tone contained no sense that he had wished anyone well in his entire life.

“Do you want to go back inside?” asked Annette hesitantly, looking towards the Great Hall again, where the voices were beginning to settle down and the music was beginning to take center stage once more.

“Why would I want that?” Felix asked. He drew back for a moment. There was something like concern, or at least worry, on his face. “Wait, do you want to go back? Sorry, fuck, there’s probably tons of people who still want to dance with you.”

Annette shook her head. “That’s not what I meant. I just mean – you did lose the match with Sylvain. What’s going to happen when he realizes you ditched the ball early and didn’t dance with anyone?”

Felix gave this question a moment of thought. He answered, “I guess he can tell everyone I’m a gentleman of no honor, or something? I don’t know.” He leaned back towards Annette, pulling her closer. “I think I can live with the consequences,” he murmured into her hair.

Annette adjusted back against him, leaning on his chest. His heartbeat was clearer now; the steadiness was comforting. “I go to one measly ball and here I am cavorting with gentlemen of no honor,” she said, smiling. “What _would_ my mother say?”

“If it helps,” Felix replied, “Sylvain _probably_ won’t spread that rumor around too widely. He never bothers to follow up when he loses and owes me something. I think at the current tally he’s not supposed to talk to me for the next four hundred years.”

“That’s probably for the best,” Annette said softly. “I think you’d miss Sylvain if you didn’t talk to him for four hundred years.”

“Probably true, but don’t tell anyone.”

Annette smiled up at Felix. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

Felix didn’t reply, but the slight, almost imperceptible smile he gave her in return was unlike what she was used to seeing the rare times he smiled. There was none of the self-satisfaction of winning a sparring match – verbal or literal. There was none of the bitter irony of a sarcastic reply. He just looked happy. Almost imperceptibly happy, but happy all the same. It was such a surprise that Annette found her own smile transforming into a ridiculous grin, which turned into a helpless giggle as she buried her face against him, suddenly embarrassed. Wrapping her arms around her knees, Annette nestled against Felix and closed her eyes, deciding she’d had enough conversation for the evening. Any more details on wagers and wishes, Felix could figure out on his own.

Annette did not have a brain that was designed to stop thinking. If anything, she had a brain that was prone to try to process three or four trains of thought at once until it all converged into a single train of panic. And there was certainly a lot to process that evening, from picking apart every single thing she’d told Felix to decide if she sounded dumb to wondering how he could be so warm when the winter was so cold to trying to figure out how she was going to tell Mercie everything the next day when she wasn’t even sure what anything was in the moment. And she still didn’t know who was in that Tower. And that dang bird was still singing. But gradually, Annette’s scattered thoughts slowed, and the world around her became calmer, and softer, and less of a problem she needed to solve. The call of the bird was just sound, it didn’t need identification to be beautiful. Felix’s arm around her was safe and warm, she could figure out the narrative of how she got there later. And if time didn’t actually stop, it stopped being something she needed to keep track of – if it was minutes or hours didn’t really matter, it was a moment and it was hers.

If the ball was winding down, the music didn’t reflect it. The general clamor of the Great Hall in the distance caught Annette’s attention as the string quartet began a waltz, a variation on a familiar folk song that Annette recognized from her childhood. Her mother had sung it, and the tune reminded Annette of kitchens and gardens and cinnamon and sunshine.

“I love this song,” she murmured, twisting towards the sound to look towards the windows as if that could help her hear it better.

Felix also turned. “It sounds familiar. I feel like I know it?”

“It’s a famous folk song from northern Faerghus,” Annette explained. “Did you hear it growing up?”

Felix shook his head. “I don’t think so. No one in my family was particularly musical.” Annette was unconsciously tapping out the rhythm of the music into the grass, humming the song to herself. Felix listened for a moment. “Maybe I heard it from you,” he said quietly. “That might be why I like it so much.”

Annette blushed, and stopped humming. But she smiled.

She heard Felix take a deep breath before he spoke, which was unusual – he usually spat his words out as if they were already on the tip of his tongue. Nervousness was not keeping within his character.

“So do you want to dance?” he finally asked.

“What?” Annette looked back at him.

“You said this was your favorite song,” he said, gesturing once more towards the open windows. “You said you wanted tonight to last forever. It would be ridiculous to run away from a ball and not dance anymore if it really made you that happy.”

“I thought you hated dancing, though. You . . . made that pretty clear tonight.”

He sighed. “Listen, I know I messed up. And I do hate balls, I hate all of this, I hope I never have to go to another party for the rest of my life.” He paused, finally looking down at her. “But if it was just you and me, if I didn’t have Sylvain breathing down my neck every time I looked at you or fucking _Hilda_ hiding three chairs over trying to eavesdrop – ”

“I _knew_ it,” Annette whispered victoriously.

“ – then of course I’d want to dance with you. I just want – I think you’re –” Felix covered his face with his hand and sighed again. The sentences he started certainly sounded promising, if he could only pick one to finish. “I’m bad at this,” he mumbled through his fingers.

“Completely abysmal,” Annette agreed.

“So, is that a yes?” Felix asked, looking through his fingers.

As an answer, Annette stood up, brushing off Hilda’s dress carefully and smoothing down the edges. By the time she looked up to offer her hand to Felix, he was already on his feet.

There was something to be said for a ball without any other people, without the stares and the knowing smiles and the giggles as she passed by. There was also something to be said for dancing with someone whose life revolved around proper footwork – despite his protests, Felix evidently _did_ know his way around a waltz. Annette leaned her head against his chest and closed her eyes, trusting that he wouldn’t lead them into a tree or let her fall. His heartbeat mixed with faraway strings and with the soft night breeze that fanned his cloak out around her, until she wasn’t sure which sound was which. The goddess couldn’t give her forever, she knew, no one could. But the _now_ she had was so rich and so complicated and so much of what she didn’t know she wanted until she had it, that maybe that was enough.

If any couples in the Goddess Tower had decided to look down that night, they might have found the lone couple dancing by the lake, their reflection shimmering in the water next to the perfect and watery sphere of the moon, to be quite picturesque. But in general, couples who make it up to the Goddess Tower are disinterested in the ground below. Only the moon saw Felix pull Annette closer as the musicians finished their final songs, packed up their instruments, and prepared to go home. Only the wind heard whatever song Annette sang to herself to fill the silence after the Great Hall had its music replaced by the general chatter of a ball winding down to a close. But years later, everyone who remembered that year’s Winter Ball would fondly, perhaps nostalgically, remark that the moon did seem to shine brighter than usual and the wind seemed warmer than the winter called for as the students of Garreg Mach put on their cloaks, bid each other goodnight, and made their way to bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If Sylvain does declare that Felix is a gentleman with no honor who refused to dance at the ball, Felix would never correct him. But I like to imagine that Sylvain is smart enough to know when he’s gotten what he wants, so he probably didn’t bring it up again. He probably *does* bring Annette up again, a lot, but that’s a plotline for a different story.
> 
> Anyways, that’s that on that! This is lowkey a holiday story, if holidays are about being cold and going to parties and not having a that great of a time but still having a lot of anxiety about the fact that the holidays will be over soon. Which mine usually are!
> 
> Thanks to everyone who left nice comments; you all are a barrel of fun. Wishing a happy 2020 to everyone; thanks so much for reading!


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